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The Dreaming Chamber in the depth of the Grand Aquifer. The empty throne. The locked door. The waters of the sacrificial pool lapping at the hems of their robes. The smell of sulfur in the cold, damp air. Their Prophet waiting for them in the water.
Somehow, it feels like Sibling Rane has already been here before.
“You’re my most faithful servant, Rane. Aren’t you?”
There could ever be only one answer to the hand proffered from the cold, dark waters.
“Of course I am,” Rane tells Faulkner, feebly accepting their role. Like it’s the only thing they can say. Like reading off a script.
Rane takes a step forward, and the world shatters around them, fracturing like the colored glass of kaleidoscope. They go down a mirror maze, flickers of so many lives and possibilities passing by alongside them like warped reflections. All at once, their foot lands in an unsure step, an assured stride and a gentle tread.
With light dimming in their eyes, they go to him like to the gallows. They run into his arms like into a lover’s embrace. They stalk with dark intent, a hand behind their back and a razor up their sleeve. They go to him without a single shadow of doubt clouding their mind. They trudge with defeatedly slanted shoulders and cold dread filling their veins. They step forward with a tender smile and hope shining in their eyes. They march with resolution carved into their face and resolve echoing in their footfall. They stumble, breath shaky and eyes darting back to the locked door. They step forward with pride welling up in their chest and their chin raised high. They drag their feet, lip trembling, heart aching, panic pounding in the head. They plod with clenched teeth and a curse of his name on the tip of their tongue. They move with a final prayer to their god on their lips.
No matter what, one thing is always the same. They always go to him.
Water above. Water below. Water all around. Water in their lungs. Rane is dying.
This always happens, too.
Faulkner’s screaming sails above the water’s roiling surface and echoes under the temple’s dark vault. His biting, merciless hand keeps driving them under, deeper and deeper down. There is nothing miraculous about the revelation: he is not going to let them up.
The first strike of the Driftwood staff knocks the last air out of Sibling Rane’s lungs. The second comes with hot, splitting pain igniting in their temple and blood blooming in the water. Underwater, Rane’s head snaps to the side as they choke on brackish water flooding their airways, struggling and thrashing against the hand around their throat. The third hit lashes the open palm of their flailing hand. Rane can’t feel their numb fingers close around it, and yet they do. They hang onto the surprisingly light piece of wood clutched in their hand like to a lifeline, and they yank. Drowning and suffocating, they still feel the hand digging into their neck slipping away, then disappearing.
Sibling Rane doesn’t beg for mercy as they fight to the surface. Instead they make a run for it.
Head snapped back and water splashing heavily around his middle, Faulkner stumbles rearwards as Rane lurches forth, feet finally connecting with the bottom of the pool, and staggers away. They manage to shamble away a couple of paces, reeling and greedily gasping for air, eyes terribly wide and their vision going bright and white.
Faulkner looks dazed—bemused even—as he slowly lowers his hand from his face, the look in his eyes dim, and distant, and not quite all there. Blood is streaming from his nose, red, hot and bright. The brightest, most real thing in the room. All color seems to leech away from the world around, leaving it washed-out and gray, while his blood screams, brilliant and vivid. Blood coloring his teeth, blood smudged all over his parted lips, blood dripping down his chin and drop by drop dissolving in the black water.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, Rane almost says without even thinking, but the only thing that comes out of their mouth is water as they double over, coughing, and retching.
Right. They almost drowned. He almost drowned them.
The Driftwood staff bobs on the water between them. There is nothing grand and mystical about it anymore. It’s just a piece of driftwood. Still has a couple of dark and blooded strands of Rane’s hair sticking to it.
It’s all silent for one dead moment. Then Faulkner drags his saturnine black eyes to them, his heavy piercing gaze making their blood run cold as it nails them in place like a pinned insect. Sibling Rane is afraid to move, afraid to even breathe.
Slow and menacing, Faulkner reaches a hand to them, his palm stained with fresh blood. “Rane. Come here.”
Rane bolts. They are not the only one who does. Splashes of water fly like shrapnel. The way out of the dreadful waters is so achingly, painfully close, but their heavy, sodden robes treacherously drag them down, their head is swimming in a breathless fog, legs shaking and unsteady through every step, lungs burning with fire of agony, and Faulkner descends upon them like a falcon. The hand with a promise of death at its fingertips grabs them by the hair just a moment before Sibling Rane reaches the pool’s border.
“Already leaving me, Sibling? This is too far for you? Where did all your loyalty and devotion go? What’s wrong? Don’t you want to hear the music?” Every word is terror and fury, every word is a slap in the face, every word is a stab in the back.
Faulkner yanks them back so hard it feels like their whole scalp might come off. Bright, sharp pain engulfs them like a madly foaming wave crashing over their head. Rane’s cry is a broken arrow shot blindly into the darkness.
Sibling Rane loses their footing as they tumble back, and Faulkner drives them down, smashing their face into the water’s surface. Water stings their eyes, punches up their nose, crawls into their throat. An endless moment of searing agony, and rushing water, and pounding blood. White flashes of light blur into blinding, nauseating patterns before their eyes as, will-less, helpless, Rane is dragged back up by the hair, Faulkner breathing hard and rhythmical above them.
They choke. They gasp. They beg. “Faulkner! You don’t have to do this! I won’t tell anyone, just, just stop, I’m begging you!”
“And what did you do when I asked you to stop?” His maddened, poisonous whisper turns to a roar of pure rage against their ear. “You made me do it! You made me kill!— my!— sister!”
Voice breaking in the scraped raw and bloody throat. “High Prophet, please!” Rane’s broken idol answers their desperate prayer by violently plunging their head back underwater.
The next time he yanks them up, still cursing and screaming bloody murder, they throw their head back hard, their skull screaming in agony as it makes contact. Yet this time Sibling Rane is not the only one hurting: Faulkner cries out, short and startled, as his temple explodes in white-hot pain. His grip on them slips.
Rane whips around, desperate to cover their vulnerable back. The world rocks and tilts around them, and Faulkner is already upon them again, pressing onto their shoulders, pushing them down no matter how hard they try to keep him away with their forearm shoved against his throat.
His blood drips down onto their face.
Rane is gasping, panting, bubbling through the suffocation, the tearing ache in their lungs, and occasional mouthfuls of water. “I’ll do whatever you want, just let me go—”
“I want you gone! You, and Him, and me! I want all of you gone—” Faulkner’s voice is hoarse and wounded like there is still pain in him that can’t be expressed by wrath and cruelty. He looks like he is laughing. Sounds like he is crying. “But you just won’t let go off me, you leeching horrors!.. you hungering things!..”
Their Prophet’s shrill screaming that rips the lining of his throat bloody is the only thing ringing in Rane’s ears and flooding their head.
They are splashing on the water like squabbling children, the two of them. Pushing and pulling, clawing and scratching, grasping at each other with numb fingers, spluttering pitifully all the while. It’s ridiculous. It’s surreal. It’s… the most terrifying, terrible thing that has ever happened to them.
The great, cold walls of the temple spin around them, loom over them, press them down into the water. There are rows and rows of prickling eyes peering at them from the shadows of the cracks. The echoes are thunderous—they sound like thousands of voices. Their is a new kind of poisonous panic bubbling and foaming in Sibling Rane, rising in their throat like a wave of vomit. If he keeps yelling like this, everyone is going to hear. To be heard, to be found, to be saved—the notion of it should be choking them with hope, and yet cold sinking dread is all they feel. No one can see the High Prophet like this.
Desperately, Rane slaps their hand over his mouth.
Wide-eyes and terrified, they hiss through clenched teeth, “Faulkner, be quiet, everyone is going to hear you!”
Faulkner bites down hard, bloodied teeth ripping into their flesh. The sharp shot of pain lances through Rane and explodes past their trembling lips. The scream is cut short as a hand wraps around their neck, nails digging deep into the skin, vicious fingers crushing their windpipe.
In the moment when Faulkner puts all his weight into driving them under the yawning black water, Rane stops trying to escape. Instead their hand shoots up to hook around the back of his neck. And they take him down with them.
The two of them spin in the darkness of the water, locked in a terrible embrace.
Sibling Rane’s head is the first to break the seal of water.
Delirious from pain, dizzy from suffocation, still bleeding from the temple, and with Faulkner’s skin and blood under their very fingernails, they are still trying to plead and reason their way out of this nightmare. “Please, stop all this, please, I’m begging you, let’s— let’s just talk. We can still fix this, I’ll fix all this! Just listen to me, for once in your life just listen!”
Faulkner resurfaces spluttering and with sodden hair plastered all over his wet, wretched face. His reddened eyes are swimming with angry, furious tears, the twist of his mouth is the very shape of misery. His cry is both a scream and a sob. “You should’ve let me drown!”
He lunges at them in mindless agony, so all Rane can do is push him away, and then keep pushing, and pushing, and pushing until he slips under the water. They are so, so tired, their mind razed by the all-consuming fire of fear and ashen with grief, sorrow, and marrow-deep hurt of betrayal.
Sibling Rane has never questioned him. Not once. Always followed his lead and example, believed him and in him even when Faulkner himself seemed to stop. They had his back, they covered for his mistakes, his insufficiencies. They’ve stood by him through it all. And after everything this is their reward. This is what he has to offer them in return.
The dam breaks.
“How have I failed you?” Through clenched teeth, Rane demands answers from the blur of a face under the roiling water and cascading bubbles. “What have I not given you?”
Faulkner rocks up under them, and Rane pushes down harder, water streaming down their face, mouth hanging open, breath cold, and sharp, and ragged. They are not done yet. God, and to think how they used to hang onto his every!.. damn!.. word! His turn to listen now.
“I— we— your people love you, they have left everything behind for you, have sacrificed so much! For you! But you just take, and take, and take—”
Faulkner’s flailing hands stretch out from the water to claw at them blindly, wildly, but they feel weaker now. Still, breathless anger rises in Rane like a high tide. Even now he is still fighting them. Why does he has to fight, and struggle, and push? They are supposed to be on the same side!
Voice rattling in their bruised windpipe, Rane is screaming now, screaming like their heart is bleeding. “You promised, you promised us all— Why have you abandoned us? And what have become of you, High Prophet? You’re supposed to be better than this! Does that not make you ashamed?! You are supposed to be better!”
None of this is going like it was meant to. Maybe it was always a mad dream. Thinking there was something special in him.
Sibling Rane’s head is swimming as if plunged into a dark devouring whirlpool. Their arms feel taut and strained like steel wire, their fingers hurt from how hard they are digging into the man beneath their palms.
The water around is splashing more and more meekly, the ripples dying down. At some point Faulkner’s hands slip off their shoulders and sink into the water. Rane barely notices that. They keep pushing down, desperate to kill the hurting.
“I believed in you! I trusted you! I trusted you with my life!” Their voice breaks.
Their vision sinks into a blurry fog as their eyes burn and sting with hot choking tears. Wet, miserable sobbing rocks their chest in hurtling waves. They can’t breathe. Rane thinks they must be drowning again. They let go, stumbling back until their back hits the cold stone of the pool’s border.
Sibling Rane closes their saltwater-bleeding eyes, and they force themself to breathe through clenched teeth and running nose until the wheezing gasps don’t feel like punches to the chest. Their lungs still feel like an open and screaming wound, their throat completely shredded and bruised, and when they touch their tremoring fingers to the temple, Rane can’t help but hiss, the sore place where their skin got scraped off feeling hot, raw, and wet. Their leaden head is pounding, the pain of it so deafening and deep they can feel it pulsing in their tooth roots. Their bursting, burning heart just won’t calm down, hammering and battering behind their ribs, in their throat, in the stomach, in the temples, and in every wretched and painfully alive vein. This is the very worst they’ve felt in their whole, entire life.
Sibling Rane feels even worse when they think about how they’ll have to move past this.
No one can know what happened behind this chamber’s locked doors.
They just… can’t afford it. Not right now. Everything is already going out of hand, falling apart and crumbling and this… seeing—knowing—the High Prophet like this will end it all. Their people are already choking on doubt, drowning in panic—if Sibling Rane tells them the truth about their idol, there won’t be anything left for them to believe in. And they are not letting him ruin everything.
They will never speak of this. And they will make sense of it. Meaning always comes from suffering… it has to.
This was a momentary lapse of judgement, a bout of overwhelming insanity, a fleeting madness. Faulkner was overcome by the terrors of the divine, he wasn’t thinking right, he wasn’t himself, he made a mistake. Deep down he has a good heart, Rane lies to themself despite the shaking hands and gritted teeth, despite the chilling fear coursing through their body and the burning anger roiling in their stomach.
Sibling Rane wipes their face with wet, cold hands.
“Well, uh, High Prophet…” Their voice sounds absolutely wrecked as it echoes in the dark. The most miserable sound in the world. “We both did and said some hurtful things that we did not really mean... But nothing irreparable has been done. We can still fix all this, we— I will help you. All can be made right yet. You—”
It’s quiet, so quiet, too quiet. Only one set of breath disturbs the silence. Their own breath.
“Faulkner?..”
Legs stiff and shaky, Sibling Rane slowly wades back into the water, their head spinning with each step they take. Something cold and heavy squeezes their nervously fluttering heart in a merciless fist. Breath rots at the back of their throat. Bleary-eyed, they scan the waters, brows furrowed in a broken expression.
Rane’s reflection is a shadow on the water. It looks more and more wrong the longer they gaze into it. Until it’s not them at all but their Prophet’s pale face staring up at them as it sinks into darkness.
Somebody—Rane—screams. Short and sharp, the sound like shattering glass, and a wounded animal, and being gutted. They don’t hold their breath as they rush to dive down. Just like at the water-butt, Sibling Rane grasps onto their Prophet like their very life depends on it. Only this time when they pull him back up to the surface, Faulkner doesn’t cough up the water from his lungs. All limp limbs, and lolling head, and murky, glassy eyes, he doesn’t do anything at all. Only keeps slipping away from their hold, suddenly so dreadfully heavy. Dead weight, some echo at the back of their head offers unhelpfully, and Rane wants to cry all over again.
Hands shaking, they gather him up into their arms with high-strung, guilt-ridden tenderness. Nothing, nothing, nothing as they search for his pulse, a cascade of faint shaky “no”’s spilling from their quivering lips. They touch their trembling fingers to his parted anguish-tinted lips, but the corpse mouth is cold, still, and breathless. Rane pulls back their hand as if burnt. Faulkner’s wide and very dead eyes stare up at them, the expression etched into his deathly, horribly wan face a rictus of pain, and they can’t take it. Rane averts their gaze as they reach to close his eyes. Still, he doesn’t look any less dead than before. God, he looks so dreadfully young instead.
“Faulkner, you can’t do this to me,” Rane whispers to him pleadingly. “You can’t just—” They can’t even say it, breath painfully hitching in their throat.
So they hold the body in their arms closer, tighter as if this way there is still a chance that they can warm him back to life. Rest his heavy, will-less head upon their shoulder, gently brush away the sodden hair sticking to his forehead. Their hand comes up to softly cradle the side of his coldly wet face as their sorrow-twisted, trembling lips press desperate, despairing kisses to his pale forehead, fragile temple, sunken cheek, the corner of his dead mouth. With aching heart, Rane fishes one of his drooping palms out of the water, holds it obscenely tight in their hand.
“Oh Faulkner, what have you done?..” Their voice sounds distant and faraway even to their own ringing ears. “How— how did this even happen? This can’t be happening.” Not to them, not now, not like this.
Sibling Rane doesn’t understand. They remember their hands on him… pushing down. But that can’t— it doesn’t—
Rane knows the answer, of course they do, yet they still try desperately to close their eyes to the ugly truth. None of this should’ve ever happened. It wasn’t supposed to go this way. They never wanted this. They’ve dreamed of a different story.
“What do we even do now?” Rane asks their Prophet helplessly. “What do I do?” they ask the dark waters around them.
No one answers.
Sibling Rane is left standing alone in the cold and dark water, half-drowned themself and with a dead body in their arms. It feels like this is where it should end. The finale of a tragedy. Curtain-fall, and cut to black.
And yet it’s not over. Rane has already drunk the full bitter cup of suffering, and they still have to keep going even though there is nobody left to tell them what to do and to help clean up this horrible mess. And he gets to just wash his hands of them, to be absolved of all the pain he has caused them because he is dead, and cold, and so unfairly young. Rane lets Faulkner’s palm slip from their hand and sink back into the water.
The Driftwood staff still floats on silently. As if waiting.
Maybe they can still fix it, make it all better, make him better.
Faulkner may be gone, but they are still here. If Sibling Rane is the one telling the story, maybe he doesn’t have to be a weak and crumbled leader and a mad tyrant, a liar and a betrayer, a disappointment and a failure. In the Silt Verses, he will be who they want him to be. Who their people need him to be.
After all, nothing hits the heart quite like a youthful hero who becomes a youthful martyr. And so the story will continue along its natural course. It doesn’t have to end here. Does not have to end like this.
Nobody has to know about what happened here today. They will write something different, something better. About how Father in the Water took the most beloved, the most deserving of his children into his watery embrace and welcomed the High Prophet Faulkner into the Garden Below. How the Prophet bid his faithful devotees to go on without him, his last wish being for them to take the blessed gift of the Wither Mark and to reshape the face of the world in silt and blood. And so they will—Sibling Rane can already picture the foundations of the Saint’s Dam exploding as the river frees herself and rises, untamed and furious.
Still, the bruises blooming around their neck in the shape of their Prophet’s fingers, the imprint of his teeth still unfaded upon the flesh of their hand and blood caking at their temple tell a different story. But no matter. They will make something up, make it believable, make it right.
Rane takes care to work the muscles of Faulkner’s jaw loose so the rictus grin is no longer quite so evident. Do their best to try and mold his expression into something more peaceful, more palatable. They slip the thick, trailing white robes around his shoulders and with numb yet still shaking hand close the shiny clasp of the cope on his chest. Finally they lay the wreath of kelp and bulrush upon his head—and it is done.
It is finished.
The death of the prophet becomes the birth of a martyr.