Familial Bonding

Walking these days was quite the chore, though in all things Serilda managed to carry herself with grace and ease. It helped that she could reduce the weight on her body with the use of her magic, though she truly did her best not to rely on such measures. Being able to carry not just one child but two was a miracle that even after all these months she wasn’t entirely sure she had fully come to realize yet. This, despite her looking like she was damn near ready to pop, though that was largely because she had two children growing in her belly. Serilda still had about two months left and she could only imagine how ridiculously large she was going to be by that point.

She strode carefully beside Mythal as they approached the area of the jail where they would conduct their regular meeting with Vriko. Mythal’s sister had, unsurprisingly, not bludged in her stance of more or less blowing off each of these visits. She was stubborn to a fault, and to a point Serilda respected that. Vriko was not a woman that would be easily moved, and why should she be? The dark haired woman had every reason to be paranoid and mistrustful, even insolent. It was how she had been raised to be, and while at some point the responsibility of blame should rightfully shift from the parent to the child after they became an adult, the truth was that Vriko had lived not just an abusive life but an exceptionally sheltered one. Even as an adult, she really just didn’t know anything better.

And that was why the two of them had taken it upon themselves to do their part in showing her alternatives. It certainly wasn’t going to be easy, and they truthfully didn’t expect to see any changes any time soon, if ever, but it was worth putting the effort in. As much as Vriko would never admit it, she was more vulnerable now than she ever had been before, particularly now that Serethar was dead and there was no one else left to look after her. She needed support, whether she wanted it or not -- much like Mythal did back when he and Serilda first started working together. Even if the progress they made was miniscule, it was still progress, and after everything she had been through and the way she had been treated, Vriko deserved that much from someone, anyone.

As the cell was lowered to meet them, one of the many Knights that patrolled the area wordlessly approached and offered Serilda a chair, “Thank you, sergeant,” she told the man politely as he unfolded it and set it out for her. Serilda sat down and took some of the pressure off her feet and back, sitting up straight and somehow still looking for all the world like a woman that wasn’t burdened by nearly twelve extra pounds of weight. Xiuhcoatl laid down comfortably beside the chair, the large wolf panting happily without a care in the world.

The meeting began with its usual beats, the three of them watching one another silently before Vriko turned away; her attempt to force them to have to move first. That was fine. They never minded giving her that control, though they always hoped that she would eventually cave and seek conversation of her own volition, some day. Mythal spoke up first, remarking upon how Vriko looked healthier after seemingly having quit the brief hunger strike she had attempted. In her usual fashion she did not reply right away, making them wait, but the pair did so patiently until she commented about how she needed to have her strength if she was ever to break out of this place. That, and she liked the idea of making them pay for food labor on her behalf.

Serilda chuckled lightly in earnest amusement over the comment, even as her fiance explained that it hardly costed them anything extra when they had people with magic to handle that sort of thing. The exchange that followed went about as well as it usually did, with Mythal doing his best to draw her into a genuine conversation and his sister doing everything in her power to be obstinate in return. It was fairly par for the course at this point, and for her part Serilda hardly batted an eye at the behavior, choosing instead to idly stroke the thick fur on Xiuh’s head and simply sit there in such a relaxed and comfortable fashion that one might think they were discussing weather over drinks in a lounge rather than confronting an incarcerated criminal.

“You can hardly blame us for being perplexed, Vriko,” the field marshal said, looking up toward the woman even as she continued to scratch Xiuh gently behind the ears. “You have been quite vocal about your feelings toward your parents, and neither of us have any doubt that their treatment of you was as awful as you claim. They didn’t care about you. Even after you did everything they asked, everything they taught you, Archimedes still gave the order to have you put down like a lame horse.” She simply stated the facts as they were, her tone even and without an attempt to get any sort of emotional rise out of the woman. There was no attempt at pity, no underlying notes meant to invoke anger or mockery. It was merely a list of unbiased truths.

“So it’s simply puzzling to us that you seem to cling so steadfastly to what they taught you rather than applying that stubborn spirit of yours to defying what they conditioned you to think. You are a leader, Vriko. You brought an entire city of mages to kneel at your feet, to obey your every command even at the cost of their own lives. Yet you continue to rail against us, against Mythal, simply because Archimedes raised you to hate him? I refuse to believe you are that ignorant. Nor that servile.”

It was obvious that Serilda had struck a nerve with her point as Vriko turned to face them fully, fixing the noble woman with a poignant glare. For her part, Serilda simply returned the look with unwavering and unreadable patience. She was no stranger to such looks, and it was important that Vriko take the time to consider her words and the senselessness of the situation without interruption. In truth, Serilda didn’t think that Vriko would even answer her. Or if she did, she presumed the response would just be to shove her commentary some place the sun didn’t shine. And for a brief moment that did seem to be the direction the conversation would go, particularly as the raven haired woman’s eyes drifted down to Serilda’s full belly with consideration.

Yet surprisingly, she did not make any sort of quip. Instead, Vriko bit back whatever snarky comment was sure to have been brewing in her mind and elected to answer with the plain truth. She didn’t hate Mythal because she had been taught to do so. She hated him simply because he was lumped in with everything else she already hated about Kingdom Darkness and its denizens. Anyone and anything tied into the realm deserved nothing more than to be burned at the stake and left to be forgotten. It was a rather extreme mindset, though all things considered Serilda could hardly blame the other woman for feeling that way. Vriko’s outlook on life was quite bleak, and why shouldn’t it be?

Serilda could only nod her silent understanding as she contemplated Vriko’s words with earnest consideration -- a trait that she had noticed long ago Mythal’s sister loathed, wanting nothing more than to cling to the violent hatred she was used to. And while Serilda did not necessarily show respect to Vriko’s honest answers when she chose to give them simply because it would annoy the woman further, she did believe it was good that the behavior often riled the other woman up. It meant that Vriko was paying attention, that she was being exposed to behaviors and emotions that she had come not to expect, things that made her angry because she didn’t understand them. And the only way she would eventually learn to understand was with continued exposure.

Mythal continued to rail back with as much sass and sarcasm as his sister, turning Vriko’s words around to point out the rather benevolent stance she seemed to have taken. This was brushed off as per usual, with Vriko’s claiming not to care about the state of the rest of the world. All she wanted was to get rid of everyone related to Kingdom Darkness so she could live her own life without having to constantly look over her shoulder. Mythal was quick to point out that she wasn’t exactly making decent progress on that after actively making enemies of himself and Serilda. It was a comment that Vriko did not react to right away, taking a rare moment to contemplate her response rather than rip off a quick snippy remark. And, as before, the Knights merely waited in patience for her to work out her thoughts.

With a sigh, Vriko admitted that the attack at Vintermyr had been Serethar’s idea. He had protected Vriko from the fate that Archimedes had tried to laden her with, but the situation had left her understandably angry. Believing Mythal had already been dispatched one way or another, she had simply wandered until she found a place where she could let out some steam, and it just so happened that the people there responded well to displays of power and prowess. The way she spoke, it sounded like she had been content with that, but when Serethar had learned of Mythal’s survival he suggested setting up a trap. To what end, Serilda would never be sure. Had he hoped that by dispatching Mythal and finally stealing his spark, that he could facilitate Vriko being welcome back into Kingdom Darkness? Or was he simply trying to give Vriko a more direct outlet for her pent up anger?

Either way, the suggestion had not set well for Vriko. Even without being able to sense lies or emotions in the literal sense, there was no mistaking the woman’s body language as she touched on the subject. The truth was all the more apparent when Mythal called her on it and Vriko tried to deflect the observation. There was another quick back and forth between the siblings, through which Serilda once again sat in quiet observance, waiting for them to have their moments before chiming in with her own points.

“You mean like how you deserved to die because you failed to live up to Archimedes’ expectations of you?” she asked, her pale blue eyes set on the woman’s back, knowing that Vriko could feel the gaze even if she currently was turned away from them. It was a cruel comment, but one that needed to be made. Serilda held no doubts that Vriko understood the folly and hypocrisy in such a stance, but that didn’t mean that the field marshal was going to let the statement go by without remarking upon its absurdity and forcing Vriko to acknowledge it.

Without giving the prisoner too much time to formulate a response, Serilda shifted carefully in her chair, adjusting herself to a somewhat more comfortable position. “Humor me. Say for just a moment the stars aligned. You somehow managed to escape this place and enact your plan to wipe out everyone involved with Kingdom Darkness -- and for the moment, we’ll ignore the fact that your desire, as you described it, implies that you yourself would also have to perish with the rest of us in order to truly purge the universe of Faera and all those both willingly and unwillingly associated with her.” Serilda gave a poignant pause there, letting the knowledge settle for just a moment that if Vriko’s plan to destroy Faera and Kingdom Darkness involved killing even those who had been unwillingly pulled into it, then she herself would need to be eliminated.

“What then? What comes next? You’d want to ‘go about your own business’. Okay, that’s fair enough. So what goal, what desires, would fill the void of your vengeance being realized?” Once again, Serilda was asking an earnest question. She was not attempting to mock Vriko’s plan or discredit her desire to see the world burn. She simply wanted to know if Vriko had truly given thought to what she wanted outside of wiping the slate clean. What would all that effort be for? To simply wander the Earth for the rest of her days, alone, devoid of anyone that could have not just cared about her but also understood what she had gone through? Would she seek to try her hand at a normal life? Would she look for love? Or perhaps, would she simply continue on in anger, to subjugate more people to her power and influence like she had in Vintermyr? As far as she could see, Vriko had been raised to believe that she didn’t have a future one way or another. Either she was to be killed by Faera and her miscreants, or she was to take Mythal’s spark and be a vessel for the goddess herself. So what future did Vriko want to see for herself?

There had been a reason Serilda had asked Vriko what her plan would be, should she manage to escape and earn her freedom. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to hear the answer, though there was surely a genuine curiosity to what it might be. Serilda had estimated in advance that Mythal’s sister likely had never given it much thought, so Serilda had not been expecting an answer. All she wanted was to plant the seed of thought in Vriko’s head, to subtly encourage the woman to start giving it some thought.

In the meantime, the prisoner mocked the question, wondering what the point would be with such fantasies. She had never expected to ever actually attain her goal. Her last ditch effort to accomplish any part of her vengeance was trying to kill the two of them in Vintermyr, and it seemed she assumed Serilda and Mythal had killed everyone involved in the attack. It was Mythal that interjected, cutting that thought down at the quick and informing her that they had not wiped the whole town. The revelation stopped Vriko in her tracks, clear confusion on her face as she stared at him like she hadn’t been able to process what he said.

Mythal explained that while a few had certainly died, that had only been due to circumstances that had been beyond Mythal and Serilda’s control. Outside of that, they had spared most of the entire town. Sure a few had wound up in the prison, and rightfully so, but the two leaders of the Rune Knights had put forth every effort into rehoming and rehabilitating the families that had been caught in the crossfire. Vriko didn’t seem to know how to take the news, and when questioned on if her expectation was that the two of them would just kill everyone, she didn’t really have a solid answer. It was a grounded enough moment that Mythal felt it time to draw back to the original question at hand.

For a moment, Serilda wasn’t sure that the woman would even attempt to provide an answer, or at least a serious one, but once again their patience was rewarded, if a bit angrily. All Vriko wanted was her freedom, the chance to have a future even if she didn’t know what that would entail. By her own words, she didn’t have much going for her. She didn’t have magic to help her stand her ground around the pillars of might around her, just a set of enchanted swords and her strict training. But Serethar had taught her about Earthland, if unintentionally, giving her a glimpse of a world where Vriko had a glimmer of hope to be free. But when she finally got there, she had no sense of what to do next. It was so foreign to what she had been raised in, that she couldn’t fathom any of it, continually waiting for something familiar to give her guidance.

So the short answer was, that she just didn’t know what she would do, and it didn’t matter anyway because as far as she could see she was still a prisoner without freedom, making Serilda’s question hypocritical in her eyes. As she put it, death would have been preferable to continued captivity. At least then, she wouldn’t have had a chance to build up hope and have it ripped away. It was a fair argument, though one that clearly didn’t come from a place of education, which wasn’t any fault of Vriko’s. Likely her only exposure to a prison system was that of Kingdom Darkness, where souls were simply dumped and abandoned, forgotten, forever. But, that wasn’t how the Rune Knights operated. Prison was not intended to be a death sentence, but rather a rehabilitation program. Serilda didn’t want all these people in jail… but she could not rightfully release them back into public without assurances that they were going to be better citizens in the future. A lot of criminals never reached that point of reformation… but many did, and Serilda and Mythal hoped beyond hope that Vriko would be such one.

Which was why they had come up with a plan.

Vriko made it clear she was done talking. And, as every time before, the two Knights would honor her decision to end the conversation. They always came for regular visits, but they would not force or impose their presences on her when she was truly ready to be done. They wanted to push her out of her comfort zone, but they also wanted to help her understand what it meant to be respected. Serilda nodded. “Very well. Thank you for speaking with us, Vriko.” With a little bit of help from Mythal, she carefully stood back up to her feet and nodded for the Knight to return to collect the chair. Xiuh got up as well, following after the pair as they made their way out. Vriko wouldn’t see it, but Serilda would be smiling softly as they turned into the corridor and out of earshot. “I think it’s time to call your father.”

Two weeks later, the jail was quiet as it always was so late at night. The third shift was on deck, a skeletal crew that kept up regular patrols through the prison to keep an eye on everyone, though most of their convicts were asleep. A night that would seem like any other night, unremarkable in any form, would prove itself to be quite eventful. Without warning of any kind, Vriko would feel her energized prison lurch as it always did when it was lowered for one of her meetings with her brother and his fiancee, however it was not Mythal or Serilda that she would find waiting for her this time.

Instead, she would find a woman that looked quite similar to Serilda in many ways, though much older. Victoria stood in all her splendor, looking as regal as any queen with a stern and powerful air of command about her, even more so than what Serilda carried. By comparison, she made the Voidwalker look much softer. Behind her was one of the guards, prone on the floor like he had either been knocked unconscious or killed, though there was no blood that Vriko would be able to see. Steely golden eyes stared down at the raven haired woman in a way that Vriko would be more than familiar with. It was the look of an ageless immortal. And she wasn’t alone. Another stood beside her, the two gazing upon the woman with vastly different countenances.

“Good evening, daughter of Archimedes. I am Victoria. This is my brother, Lux… and today is your lucky day.”