Ripple Three: At the Dawn's Mercy
written by Drelle Tai'shar and The Dawn of Blood

With a groan, Drelle tilted her head back, and met stone, as she'd expected. She remembered being slammed into the stone wall, saw Tan's face, and then.. nothing. She opened her eyes, and blinked rapidly, attempting to focus over the fog in her brain.

As it cleared, she realized she was bound, head and foot, to a very cold stone wall. She looked down at her nude body, and saw the myriad array of bruises, cuts, and an ugly red scar where the wound from the debris had been. Her left shoulder still bled from Tan's katana, but sluggishly, and hurt like the blazes every time she moved that arm. The Dawn has me.. oh, Light.. I've failed him.. A single tear slipped down her cheek from behind closed lids, all that she had left to cry.

Speaking to the empty room before her, she whispered, "I have failed you.. I am dead, now." Her head bowed forward, she waited for the end.

With a loud creak, the Dawn opened the iron door. A single torch lit the room, and his white robe shone like the moon as he stepped inside the cell Drelle Tai'shar would never leave, ever. His boots and breeches were still sodden after his visit in the tunnels together with Hanathiel, where they had found Caden. Yet now, when he had dealt with that matter, he could just wait for the reports to stream in in a steady flow. It was a shame Arkenda was dead though, his throat torn out and all. He would have to rely upon Hanathiel to carry out his mission at the Claw Stone.

Enough time, to say farewell to the River of True Blood.

Standing a few feet away from her, he folded his arms across his chest. The silence was so heavy that one could feel it agianst the skin. Purpously, he did not say anything until the right tension had built.

"Look at me," he said without emotion. "Look at me if you want to save a little dignity before you die."

Drelle didn't move her head for a long moment. Her eyes were downcast, and her head was bowed. One could have cut the silence in there with a dull knife. Slowly, she raised her head, and met his eyes. She couldn't help the thrill that raced through her at seeing him again, or the feeling that someone had wrapped a hand around her heart and squeezed. But she could, and did, fiught to keep any expression of it from showing on her face.

The scars on her body stood out in sharp relief from the paleness of her cool skin as she stood before him. She swallowed past the lump in her throat, and spoke in a low, harsh voice, "If you wanted me dead, you would have killed me when I lay unconcious and bleeding in the abandoned hall." The tear that slipped down her cheek moments before the door opened had left a faint trail through the dirt and blood on her cheek. She felt it's moistness on her cheek still as she absently wondered why she spent a tear on a man this day, when she hadn't cried since she was a young girl.

The Dawn granted her a small smile for her observation, but that was all. His eyes did not reflect that smile though.

"The only reason you still live," he said slowly, "is because I want to know what happened. I need to know why you failed. And foremostly. I need to know how much the Amyrlin Seat knows."

Two steps carried him to the torch, which he took down in his hand. "You have answers which I seek, that is all. Do not doubt me when I say that you mean nothing to me. Did you believe there was something more between us than the bond of a master and a slave? Pitiful woman..."

The light from the torch hurt her eyes, but she dared not glance away. If she was going to die, then she would be looking at her killer when it happened. For some reason, his words felt like a punch in the stomach. She blanched, and licked her dry lips. She figured she may as well tell him thr truth. There was no sense in hiding what he probably knew already.

"The Amrylin knows nothing, and where ever she is, she is injured badly from the Soldier's attack. He followed me, though how he knew me, I can't fathom. He Burned himself out in the first attack that blew my Wards to pieces, as well as the door. A kind of beserker rage swept over him, and it was all I could do to keep him from killing the Amrylin too. It is far easier to recapture the woman, than to bring her bodily parts back together after a berserker caught hold of her." Her words were low, but not submissive, and her eyes came close to challenging him. Close, but not quite.

Standing before her he considered her words, not moving a hair - like a monolith of judgement.

Then suddenly, like a coiled viper, he drove the head of the torch onto her abdomen as if he was trying to quench it. He pressed it to her pale skin for a few seconds, then withdrew it... slowly. "You fool, rather dead than free. How should I possibly recapture her now, when she has been turoughly warned by your clumsy act," he asked casually, as if he had done nothing out of the ordinary, "It will not aid you to lie to me now, woman. When I came to the room where I found the two of you, I heard the Soldier call for help. No man in a berserker's rage would do something like that. There is something you are not telling me."

He lifted the head of the torch, which solwly regained its earlier flare, to her face, and let the flames dance right before her eyes. "The Gaidin Captain has been branded by us now. I just left him in the tunnels beneath the Tower to attract the Amyrlin Seat. We placed a Ward on the body, so that if any attempt of Healing is tried - the Healer and the ones close by will die. So if you have decided to return to the Light-blinded fools, your should know your attempt to save the Amyrlin Seats life has been for naught. "And it would be a shame to destroy your pretty face to the degree of the Captain's. I could see his teeth through his burned cheek. So, Drelle Tai'shar, neither of us want that. Talk."

The pain of the torch driving into her soft belly was intense. She gasped in pain and flung her head back, but did not scream. She could smell the burned flesh, and nearly gagged. Gritting her teeth, and pulling in long gasps of air, she turned her pain glazed eyes to the Dawn. For several moments it was all she could do to keep her eyes focused. In a sudden flashback, she remembered the pain inflicted on her by Oberon when she was younger, remembered the anger and the hate that fueled her before.

Even so, even with him torturing her, she couldn't bring herself to hate him, this man who was not a man. Though she knew he would just hurt her more no matter her answer, she finally answered in something more akin to a gasp than an actual voice, "I let her go... I even pushed her out myself... That Light-Blinded fool would have buried her in a mountain of rubble so deep nobody would have ever found the body... Don't ask me how he was able to call for help... By this point, I was already out... I know what a man in the midst of a beserker rage is like, and he was." Her head sagged back against the wall, praying to someone, anyone, for relief from this awful pain, inside and out. She looked at him again, "It's not too late.. for either of us.. we can still turn back.." Internally, she prepared herself for the next brutal stab of the torch.

Eyes widening momentarily, The Dawn of Blood was not sure he had heard the woman right.

"Turn back?" he asked her, biting off the last word contemptuously and lowered the torch. "Are you saying that you want to return to the Light? Here? Before me?" The Dawn bared his teeth in building fury. He could not understand this woman. Had she managed to fool him so completely? What had she managed to do to him, to make him so weak? How could he had not seen this weakness in her before? "Either you are the most stupid woman alive in this Tower to try and convince me to return to something I have never lived in.

"I am four hundred years old now, and I have walked the Nations as the one the Great Lord send to deal with matters in the discrete subtlety, and to invoke fear for his cause. He opened my chest when I reached manhood, and his Myrdraals poured something into my blood and over my heart. From that day, I do not perceive things as you do. You have no idea what you are asking of me, servant. I was born of the Shadow, so there is nothing for me to ever return to. By His will, I have become more than human, I have been sustained by his powers to understand the gift he has bestowed upon me."

Falling silent, he considered her silver eyes for a second. Her statement meant that she had returned to the Light, and that meant she could have exposed him. She knew too much about him to live. Yet he needed to know if his false identity was exposed already. He grasped her throat with his free hand, and pressed her skull to the stone wall, grinding it hard against it. "How long since you turned back? And what have you told the Amyrlin Seat? Don't... lie..."

His dark eyes were fixed upon her when he let her throat go. Why had he not come to the point of cutting of her fingers yet? Why did he wait? By now, he should be bathing in her blood.

She couldn't feel her head hit the wall behind her. Her whole body had gone numb by this point. Turn back..? When did I do that..? Her confusion was evident in her eyes as she looked at the Dawn. THe chains on her wrists gave her just enough leeway to reach out and touch the chin inches from her own with her fingertips, though she had to strain.

"The Amrylins knows nothing of you, or who you are. The woman is so wrapped up in her little political warfares that she wouldn't recognize your name had I told her. She is blind to you, Dawn." Her eyes closed, and her hand relaxed away from his face. Angry red lines slashed through her wrist where it had cut into her flesh. She tired of this game, this cat and mouse. Either he would kill her or let her go. She was beginning to think that she might have to kill him, herself. It appeared that Caden had failed to do so. She knew he had her Sheilded, but would he expect a physical attack?

While hearing her further denials, the Dawn felt her finger crease his chin. His mind strayed fromt he topic at hand, and his hand slacked. He entered a form of trance, unlike the ones he got from dismembering a person limb for limb. Her silver eyes seemed to absorb his mind lieka dry cloth in blood. The rise and fall of her chest as she breathed made him want to breath with her. To share her breaths. He lowered the torch to his side, since it seemed to sting her eyes.

And he found his own hand trailing the line of her neck.

Aghast, he suddenly pulled back from her touch. "What are you trying to do?" he demanded, knotting his fists, "How can you control my mind? What powers have Oberon given you that can bend my will?"

The soft touch of his fingers on her neck surprised her, causing her eyes to open, but only partially.

"What are you trying to do? How can you control my mind? What powers have Oberon given you that can bend my will?" His questions were shot rapidly at her. Focusing on just breathing, she waited before she answered him, "What powers could he have given me, Dawn? What powers would Oberon possibly have that could control the heart of someone else?" Unknowingly, she echoed his prior thoughts, "Why are you not bathing in my blood by now?" She swallowed as she twisted her wrists slightly in their chains, trying to find a position that didn't rub the already raw skin. The cold air around her made her shiver, and the burn on her soft stomach was beginning to tingle painfully.

Ever the slave of his legacy, the Dawn of Blood knew his will not strong enough and he knew he was beyond repentance. Said words were said, and he could not bring them back. He had shown weakness when he should not. The River of True Blood had even guessed his weakness... to his outmost displeasure more than his surprise. And he knew no greater offence towards his maker.

"Oberon is nothing. None of his powers are beyond me, and I know it," he said levelly with a coating of fire and took a step back in her direction... his presence filling the small cell more than the fact of his body. "True, I cannot understand what affects me when I see you, but I know that it is influence from a world beyond what I ...should... know. No other woman has ever made me react like this before I kill them." His words had softened at the end, but he used the word react like a bile curse... since that fact did not sit well with him.

Could it be? He first identified the wheels that drove him as lust, as his eyes began to wander over her lasciviously. He reached out his left hand and grabbed her silver hair, holding back her head to expose her throat and neck. His right hand trailed its fingers along the pulsing veins underneath the skin... skimming softly across the surface. He could satisfy the lust by simply gnawing through the neck and have the blood cleanse his damned body. No, he thought, removing his caressing fingers but not his iron grip, That's not it. This lust is something else. I crave... her. Not her blood, not her body, and not her submission.

"No... This is not a power of yours or mine in progress," he said to her in a low voice, releasing her hair gradually, "This is beyond me. But I wonder... is it beyond you?" The words were not expected to exit his mouth, but they did nevertheless. Weakness again, he knew, but he could not help himself. "Can you tell me what is happening, River?"

Oh vile and corrupted heart, lose not your newly found nature; let not ever the soul of the Great Lord enter this chest without my consent now.

The tears.. she could feel them pushing at the backs of her eyes, but she could not give in. Why now? she asked herself, why must I fall in love now, with a man set on destroying all that I hold dear? His soft caresses brought a shiver to her that had nothing to do with the cold, and the grip on her hair merely made the soft touches more enticing.

When he released her hair, she lifted her head and looked at him, really looked at him. In her mind's eye, she remembered how he looked without his shirt. The great, ugly scars did nothing to detract from her attraction to him, like as he may not to think of them as attractive. She felt an odd pull in her gut at remembering how he'd seemed almost.. gentle.. with her. As her gaze settled on onto his at last, she knew she would have to break her heart, and possibly his. Unless he turned back to the Light.. she would have to kill him.

With her heart in her eyes, and in a voice that choked on the words, she finally answered him in a whisper, "There is nothing happening to me, but wishing that I.. that I never touched your foul body.." Her heart physically ached from the outright lie with a pain more intense than any torture ever inflicted on her. But she couldn't let it show. She just couldn't..

Light help me find the strength to do what I must!

When the Dawn heard her words, his eyes dimmed into vile black and his face fixed in a dangerously calm mask.

She... she dared reject me, he thought, stunned despite his fixed features. He was shunned, and she had shunned him for his imperfection. She had disgraced him beyond what anyone had ever managed. At first, he shrunk in despicable shame... and his right hand clenched into a fist. When the natural emotion had washed over him, and corrupted his exposed humanity, there was nothing but utter darkness left in his heart. He had believed that he had found a shred of the outside world in him, but now when he had learned that it was not so simple, he trusted in his maker. And the will of the Great Lord of the Dark was pure and unvarnished... perfectly unfaceted.

Restore honour. Immediately.

His fist impacted over her ribs, and the second blow came as a hook over her chin. For last he grabbed her hair and slammed her into the cold wall behind her. "You filthy little jade," he snarled, the vowels coated with ice. "You just assigned yourself a death in shame. I gave you a chance for life in our midst, a chance for eternal life in the service of the Great Lord. And how do you thank me, you disgusting slattern? How? You insult me! I know what a sloven you are... you showed me earlier today, remember?"

He did not know if she could hear him anymore, but he really didn't care. He unbuttoned his white robe and tossed it behind him. Next he began with his belt-buckle. She would know what had happened when he was done with her. The belt would teach her first, and then he would make her plummet so far beyond grace she would never restore her dignity. By then, she would no longer have to be chained. "Know that I could have given you the world."

She would be free to take her own life there, alone in the soiled cell. She would have to gnaw off her own wrists to escape.

He couldn't speak, couldn't see, could barely hear after her head was once more slammed into the wall. Flashes of a past she'd been forced to forget floated into her mind. Oddly, she couldn't feel what was being done to her. She felt so far away, so disconnected from her body.

There was a man, with a graying beard and a kind smile as he looked down at her. His deep brown eyes showed so much sadness, she wanted to cry. She saw his lips moving through the full beard, and struggled to hear him. Of a sudden, pain filled his eyes, and he looked at her startled. In her mind's eye, she saw why. The glistening red tip of a sword stuck through him, straight through his chest.

His lips moved again, but the voice she heard was not the one she should have, "Know that I could have given you the world." Jerked back to the present, she turned dull silver eyes on the face floating somewhere in her sight, unable to focus. The man whose name she couldn't remember any longer released her wrists and ankles from their chains, and she was dumped unceremoniously to the ground.

What came next, she would never forget. Such things he did to her, such pain. By the time he left, she was curled in a ball in a corner, muttering to herself, and tears streaked down her battered face.

*****

She woke cold, hours later. Some sense had returned to her, but it hurt horribly to move. For several minutes, she just lay there, gathering the strength, the will to move. In betraying her love, she had betrayed all.

"I am unfit to live," she hoarsely whispered to the cold stone floor. She reached a hand laborously up to gingerly touch her jaw, and winced at the immediate pain that lashed through her. She was very surprised that her jaw wasn't broken, though it sure as blazes felt like it. Forcing herself up onto her hands and knees, she crawled to the door, and tugged. As expected, it was locked, and Sheilded as she knew she was, she would have to do it by ordinary means. She blinked away the fog that threatened to consume her as she moved a bit too fast in searching for something to unlock the door, and leaned against the wall for support. Still on her hands and knees, she felt the floor for something, anything. With a cry, she jumped on the sliver of metal she found. It was barely big enough, and she had no idea where it might have come from, but it would work. With it, she made quick work of the lock, and made good her escape before someone saw her.

Crawling her way through the shadows toward the safety of the Indigo Halls and Lyn Sedai, her mind turned back to the bearded face she had seen. She would think more on this man once the Dawn was dead.

Ripple Three: Decisions

Trouble

At the Dawn's Mercy

Chapter Five: Where the Ripples End
~Ripple One: Meanings
~Ripple Two: The Hall
~Ripple Three: Decisions
~Ripple Four: The Messenger
~Ripple Five: Shadow
~Ripple Six: The Clawstone
~Riple Seven: The Claw Stone Aftermath
~The Final Ripple

Return to the Ripples Intro