Mariwa: An Ivian Tale

Holly watched as her father descended back into the waters.

He approached, only stopping when she took a step back. Waiting a beat, he tempted another step, and she suddenly didn't know if in the next few seconds she would tearing her way through the apparitions behind her or her own family, but the way her muscles coiled told it would be one or the other.

The uncertainty, the deniability, that had been better. Knowing for sure who he was, a tornado of emotions now waged a war with no winners inside her mind.

"My Mariwa." Her father said through Will, sweet and adoring, though his bared teeth and wriggling claws spoke of another story. No, wouldn't she look almost the same to him? How could she know then? "You fear the Blood."

There were a thousand things she could, that she wished to say. Discomfort ultimately won, her Will talking with all the love of a warning hiss. "Stop calling me that. My name has been Holly Seneschal ever since I was a kid, and that's what I want to be called!"

"What are you saying my Mariwa? Do you not recognize your name?" Her dad said with startling coldness. "Could your mother have denied you your very birthright?!"

"Mom died before I ever met her," she said.

There was a spell of silence, deep enough she wondered if she had shocked him with the news, or worse, hurt him in some way. His eyes widened for an instant, his lips quirked ever so slightly, but she didn't really understand what that meant.

"I see," he said, and it was her turn to be rendered speechless with the casual lack of feeling. "I had expected as much. Despite herself, she was know to have some potential. It had been a shame to see it so impudently squandered."

"I don't understand?" Holly said, and she wasn't sure she meant it, or that she wanted to.

"Nevermind it. Let us dwell on more pleasant topics." The sweetness returned, and she wondered whose side was at fault for the edge of forcefulness it carried. "You never knew your own name. I take you never known your own family's either, then?"

She had known the name he called her, and otherwise nothing. She gave a tentative shake of the head.

Her dad lowered himself into a strange bow, arms and hands spread as he bent on one knee and pushed the other back. The next words he spoke were not through Will, and she struggle to understand them.

"W-what?" she said.

the featureless curve from his mouth to his forehead creased, which she knew meant a frown. His voice was gruff yet sharp, booming with crackling highs, distorted and uncomfortable to listen. He spoke again, clearer, though his strong accent and its strange pronunciation still made it awkward to both her ears and her tongue. It almost sounded... Awinian? Was Yinian not even the language she was born to?

"Glaashee... Glashii?" She finally managed, drawing a head splitting smile from her dad.

"Glashii. Glashii Di Aila." His voice sibilated with sheer delight. "Lisi Mariwa Di Aila."

She took a few seconds to recognize the words. My Mariwa in Awinian, as if it could have been anything else. Another time, she might have pondered how different it sounded from the way Hazel used to pronounce it, how odd it felt to hear the name of a family that should have been hers paired with the way her sister sometimes called her, but her patience was wearing thin.

"Holly!" she said, not bothering with will either. "Holly Se-nes-chal!"

Her father recoiled, quivering with visceral repulse. "No. No! No! Do you not feel it in your tongue, My Mariwa? That is the language of the savage conquerors, language of arrogant crumbs, language of backstabbing animals!"

"It's my name! It's the name Elder Seneschal gave me!"

"An Elder! And Elder among the Dashi is an infant among us Children! Tell me, was Gaiwa victim of this same humiliation, or did she take to it like a fish in the pond?"

It was not the dismissive tone of his words alone that made her flinch. Holly hadn't thought of her sister very much these past few days, had she? It was cruelty, responsibility or not for her death, after everything she did for her in the end. And now, she would be forced to break her father the news.

"Dad... Hazel, she..." Holly swallowed dry the hesitation and the sudden grief. She didn't want to think about this. "Hazel is gone. I'm sorry. She wanted to save us, to... to protect me."

He listened to her in silence, face and body unreadable. As his Will replied, she felt a strange tension crossing into her. "Had she manifest the Blood?"

"...What?"

"You refer to Gaiwa, correct? Had she manifested the Blood later in her life, as well?"

"What are you talking about? What is even this Blood?" she said, unable to hold back her indignation. "And what does it even matter? I'm telling you your daughter has passed!"

In one lunge, he crossed the distance between then, forcing a sound she did not care to think on out of her throat. If her indignation was heavy, the fury pouring into her Will was a landslide. "The Blood! The inheritance of the First Mother and First Lady, the signed of us who will rule her lands; the last boon given by Old Vetara to his kin, lineage of us who built the Land of the Brave! It is everything, and without it there is nothing, do not think for a second that your manifestation means you are excused from respect!"

Stunned, she backed away, lost for words.

She had known there was no cure to her condition. She couldn't say she had accepted it quite yet, no, but so long as nobody treated her any different, she could forget about it. Eventually, as all things, she would learn to live with it time.

And yet.

And yet, this was supposed to have happened? All this misery, this loneliness, this horror?! She was supposed to break like an abused doll, to drag herself out of her own carcass with just teeth and nail, to become the kind of thing who killed a man with just a glimpse?! That had been passed down to her? And now he wanted to know if her sister had suffered the same.

"No. Of course not! And thanks goodness for that!" she said, laughing. "No, she grew like a human, and lived like a human, the way she was meant to be! I can't imagine what would happen if she did, she-"

She would want this so bad if she knew, regardless of the consequences.

Holly felt a horrible chill. Had she known? Had she ever connected the dots? Hazel had always had such good memory, and now that she thought about it, those stories about the strange men who used to visit their home, scurrying around beyond where her eyes could catch them, yet always leaving such incredible shadows behind...

To her great dismay, her father gave a solemn nod. "Then she did right."

"Don't say that."

"My Mariwa, she-"

"I told you to not call me that!" She bristled. "How could you say she did right? She is gone!"

"I understand. I don't blame her for her birth. The Blood chooses, but cannot be chosen, thus a disgrace should not be made guilt for their weakness. Yet, a disgrace is a disgrace, and that she would give her own life in service of one of the Blood earns her praise, regardless of the means."

Holly didn't respond, too horrified for words.

"I had no expectations of her. To learn she made good use of her life is pleasant indeed! That my Mariwa-"

"Shut up."

They both froze; he cocked a head to the side, none too pleased, and she was left unsure were that cold thing was rising from. Didn't matter, she supposed. She let it boil to the surface, contours growing sharp and vicious in their connection.

"You would-"

"Shut up!" she repeated, taking a step in his direction. "Do you know how much she dreamed of our old home? How much she dreamed somebody would come rescue her, rescue us?! I didn't even believe Skawla was real but... she wanted to risk it all to go back, you know? Dying to God scared her less than never seeing it again!"

Her father scoffed, an ugly sound if she had ever heard any. "All those who experience the City of the Brave clamor for its beauty! That she would come to desire it is only natural. Fear not, my child, because I guarantee you this: she will be remembered in our mausoleum. Let no other critic!"

She took another step forward. He resumed his approach. "That's it?"

His forehead creased. "It is an honor."

They stood an arm's length from each other. Over the islet, the light of the great flower shining at his back, she had imagined an immense figure, herself made even larger, but the reality is that even with her head down her father was still the shorter party. She looked at him in the eyes.

"Why?" she asked. "Why did you never come?"

At first, he didn't answer, choosing to match her gaze. Then he looked down, and this time it was his turn to strike with powerful feelings: rage-stained grief struck her with such suddenness she gasped, hair lashing at the back of her head, phantom tears she could never cry threatening to spill.

"The Aila family was once esteemed. Prestigious. Ancient! Our bloodline ran as far as the brood of the Second Lady! And yet, we were slaughtered like animals!

"It was the Lady! Wretched scum sucker, bloodline wasted by blinding greed, a thousand years besmirched by hunger! We were accused of the most grievous crime of abetting treachery, trialed and judged guilty by our peers thanks to her deceit with no chance of recourse, and punished before we had the time to react!

"I fought this fate, of course. But what can one man do against the will of the Lady? The few of us who survived were forced to beg and offer vassalage, and may I be struck down if regret ever enters my mind, I would not stand for it! I fled, along with some of our survivors.

She resisted to the best of her ability. It was no use. A howl of anguish escaped her mouth, madness filling her mind. She could almost see it, the holy bodies of her family left to litter the hallways of their ancestral home like burst sacks of meat, the blood of servants and aristocrats alike mingling in between olden marble floors and four times restored art, neither the young nor old spared.

"I was found. I was defeated. I was humiliated!"

She fought against the images in vain. She didn't feel any pain but she saw the beatings, the lashings, the way hardskin could be broken into and peeled like the carapace of an insect, the parading of a body, naked and flayed, along a gallery of abominations. She couldn't bear with it: "S-stop! Please, stop!"

The worst had yet to come.

"They promised me atonement. All they needed was a show of submission. And so, I was married to a stain."

A petite woman stood by a ridged, transparent creature, her face blank and posture elegant and unasuming. Her skin was dark, yet her hair carried a shade of brown typical only to the Bear, fine vests sagging over her shoulders like a poorly fit mask. Ugly thing, vile omen, child of animals. No, that wasn't what she was seeing, that wasn't her!

"Of Blood yet bearing no Blood. My line was strong and I hoped I could overcome her curse, as I had not grasped yet the depth of the Lady's cruelty, not as I would. Impurity cannot be so easily cleansed!"

"No!" Holly screamed against the torrent, for revenge and for salvation. She saw a child, disgusting creature, a reminder of his lack.

"Filth! No better than the misshapen Dashi! She bore me spawn, an inkling of hope, slowly smothered before my very eyes."

She saw Hazel. She was Hazel, Hazel and nothing else, no matter the pond grime flowing into her Will. She recognized her even as a baby, lovely huge eyes staring wide from the woman's arms in both defiance and curiosity. The way she was being held, obscured under her flank, was nothing short of shielding.

"I know my own mistakes. You were born to us, and I feared the worst, my disquiet growing with every day you failed to manifest the Blood. If I had known, I wouldn't have overreacted, I wouldn't have pursued."

Broken from the spell, or rather, willfully barring its influence, she saw nothing. Yet, she could imagine what he wanted to show, and it churned her stomach.

"The Domain of your captor was strong. I could have breached it, but I had to make a hard decision, one that will haunt me to my grave. I hope you can forgive me."

There was sincerity there, she could feel it. It didn't make things better. At this point, she didn't know if she truly wanted to hear it, and yet her Will acted. "Why then?"

"You know why, don't you my Mariwa? I just didn't know. If I wrenched our coffers dry, only to find you had remained a disgrace the same way your sister did, how would I justify it-"

To say instinct had made her jump him would not be entirely accurate. In the very last moment, while she had just enough time to restrain herself, she clenched the open handed swipe into a fist so only her knuckles hit her father square in the jaw, knocking teeth loose and pushing him back several paces. In the aftermath of her attack, even the apparitions seemed to go quiet with shock.

Her father spat blood, rubbing at the bruise who would not so quickly fade from his skin. When he looked back at her, there was no kindness left. "You dare strike at your own progenitor, with Divine Intent?! Do you understand the magnitude of that sin?! I should-"

"You should nothing." Her Will crashed against his, no longer even trying to restrain her hostility. "How dare you! We were your daughters, how could you think of us like this?! Elder Seneschal wasn't even our real dad, and he still did as right by us as he could!"

"Oh, mind yourself!" He fought back, easily overcoming her offensive through sheer slickness. "We are better than that. Don't lower yourself to such crude Dashi sentimentality!"

"Sentimentality?!"

"Sentimentality! You keep insisting on that point when I already acknowledge the wretched have no fault in being born wretches, what more do you wish from my person, groveling?! I shall do no more than recognize the truth of things."

"We were your children! You chased us out of our home over nothing, and you talk about your own daughter like she is trash!" She couldn't believe her own words. Not in her worst nightmares had she ever imagined she would need to say this out loud. "How dare you call me sentimental for defending her?!"

"Oh, open your eyes, you petulant moron!" He bared his teeth, venom pouring from him. "Do you think the Blood has the time or patience for failures? It would be the death of our family!"

"We were children."

"But she was no Child, Mariwa. She had no place in the Dream."

And to that, what could she say?

"Let us forget then, about her, about that filth bloodied mother of yours, and that manwhore of hers who aided in her kidnap of you! Their fates were already sealed from the beginning, my Mariwa, however yours stands before you, ripe for the taking! Come with me, back to the City of the Brave. I won't let harm come to you, never again."

"I don't care!" she said. Already planning how to pierce through the Apparitions. "I changed my mind, I'm going back to my comrades!"

A shift in tone reached her before words could. A triumph so cold it bordered on bloodthirsty. "There is nothing to return to, my Mariwa. The Parasites are nothing but corpses by now."

She went numb. "What did you do?"

"I may be flawed, but an idiot I am not, Though this band acted eccentric, I know what to expect of the Faceless, so I didn't come alone, wouldn't be allowed to." He chuckled, dragging himself deeper into the depths of the lake. "Rejoice, my daughter! You shall soon meet your family's elite!"

For as much as she hated that animal thing inside of her, she didn't hesitate in listening to it for once.

She threw herself at him again, this time holding nothing back. How unfortunate, then, that he was expecting her this time, sidestepping the punch with such ease he might as well have predicted her down to the motion, and quickly lowering himself underwater. She tried to give chase, grasping hand lunging into the murk laying beneath the surface but finding nothing. Her Will tried to keep hold, but it was too late.

The Lake went silent as the gurgling audience sang in distress. She knew the trick by now, coiling her Will around herself like a snakeball, ready for her father's touch. The once mirror surface had become disturbed, waves surging in such perfect motions they could be nothing if not controlled, creating phantom figures that rose at the corners of her eyes, only to disappear as she focused on them.

The caress came.

"I know my mistakes."

her first strike missed entirely, too slow and too late.

"You reject yours."

The second caress she caught, her grip too weak to keep the limb in place.

"Thank Old Vetara, then."

The third was held for an extra blink, but it too wriggled out of her hands.

When the fourth came, she closed into it like a mantle, ready to pull him.

And that's how she was enveloped whole. She panicked, squirming tendrils binding her Will tight as she tried to pull them off, and so didn't even notice the shoulder tackle until it crunched her face, sending her reeling as a swipe pulled her right off her feet. A hand closed around her neck, pushing her underwater with enough strength to crash her against the sediment beneath, choking her windpipe bruised.

"That your father makes for a good teacher. There is much to be corrected in you, my Mariwa, but don't you worry, I'm a patient man."

She struggled desperately against his grip. Her nails found no purchase on his arms, her legs found no proper leverage to push him away; her Will coiled back around his, only to learn her hostility had found its match in her father's. The hand crushed her, its iron grip almost popping out her head before relenting.

"The Blood does not breath my daughter. The divine leave behind such dull mortal notions."

She had not a second to digest it as a foot met her right in the ribcage, a sickening crack resounding under the skin as the world spun around her. She felt herself leave the comfortable embrace of the water then dive back, bouncing off her back into the shallow reaches of the shore. Agony flared across her body, and worst, beneath it too, deeper than flesh and bone.

Her Will had been wounded. Bruises that should quickly close remained fresh and bloody, and though she might not need breath, she realized with some horror that words no longer left her throat.

She didn't dwell for long. A looming presence sent her scrambling away from the glowing flowers, a dozen pulsing, boneless appendages reaching for the spot she had just left, bubbling hoarse screams of distress and irritation left in her wake.

"I'm human." she said. "I'm human. I am!"

" ...You poor, broken thing," her father said. "No matter what, know this: the task wounds me more than it wounds you."

"I won't let you take this from me! Not you!" She screamed through her Will, already focusing on her grip to reveal her father. To her surprise, however, her father disappeared under her touch. No, that wasn't accurate either; it was as if he didn't exist, as if she had been holding a figment of her imagination all along and suddenly noticed the reality of the situation. The only reason she didn't let go was because one thing was undeniable: that nothingness was clashing against her power to power.

"But it is time for you to grow up. Playing in the muck is the act of infants."

The words warned her of his emergence, just in time for her to evade a slash that would have taken her shoulder.

She dove into the water, instincts guiding her arms and legs as she sought distance, and the battle began in earnest.