Love for One's Own

Love for One’s Own (I)

75th of Nemulum, 313 EA

Peyr Myarsa

Leça stood at the lowest edge of the city of Peyr, their dutiful vigilance a bastion against the cruel and tempestuous swamp they dared not tread.

They were alone in their alertness, if not in their duty, as from their periphery a figure approached on return from patrol of the docks. He was a younger man, shabby and scruffy, dressed in weathered green homespun. The only thing of any value on him was his wedding band, a single ring of solid iron. He nodded promptly to Leça, settling himself with his back against a crate and his cap pulled low to shade him.

“Eyes to the swamp, Gavril.” Leça intoned with an tactful sort of lilt, one that conveyed a reproach but spared the sting of judgement. “We’re meant to be on watch.”

“Abbot’s grace, Leça, it’s broad daylight. You’re watching, half the bloody city is watching. All those sorry folk down on the ground, they’re all watching I’m sure. What use is it having both of us up here on watch? And besides, how long has it been since the last attack from the fen? A year? More? We don’t both need to be on bloody watch.” Despite his constant grumbling, Gavril lifted himself up from his seat to stand beside.

Leça glanced back over their shoulder and up, their view of the ziggurat form of civilization unobscured from their post. They could see from the wide base that stilted the entire structure up out of the muck all the way up to the city’s glorious peak where the high abbots resided, and across every incumbent level between.

“I understand, Gavril. It would be nice to rest, for me as well.” Leça continued their sweep across the great city, and as they did their eyes crinkled in a gentle smile. “But we have a responsibility, here. All the people, the people of Peyr, we depend on each other. We all fill our roles, we do as we are meant to do, and in that way we thrive. Others grow food, or weave clothes, or keep off the swamp. You and I, we watch. There is a great beauty in getting to watch, I think.”

Gavril looked at the city with Leça, really saw it for a moment, and in doing so he stood up a little straighter.

Peyr was sloped and edged, stacked and staircased, its wood was constantly rotting out and needing to be replaced, and to Leça the mundanity of it was wholly deserving of a reverential awe. “This city is the last of all cities. It’s people are the last of all peoples. You’d do well to remember that.”

Love for One’s Own (II)

82nd of Nemulum, 313 EA

Peyr Myarsa

The lower stacks of Peyr played host to the bulk of the city’s residents, to their laborious days and nights of humble rest. The rest of the city hung atop this grand foundation, casting all but it’s outer edges in shadow. The constant overhang gave the district a cavernous feel, some facsimile of living underground or else as mice beneath the floorboards of giants.

A crowd had formed in this undercroft, amidst a market square. From the center of the crowd rang a singular voice, wizened and perhaps louder than ought to have rung from one as elderly as they were. 

“To endure this life, one must hold a love for one’s own in their heart. And make no mistake, we here are our own.” The words left the people gathered to swirl and mingle, to coalesce around one another.

Leça pushed in to join the crowd, heavy-handed and humble but met with only the soft smiles of recognition as they nodded a neighborly greeting to as many of the onlookers as they passed.

“Our days run long,” The speaker continued, “Our backs strain with the weight of our responsibility even as our tools break. And for that we pray. Illness takes our rank, our sisters and brothers, and for that we pray as well.”

The crowd murmured between his words, nodding along. He drew long, measured breath in before the weight of his next statement fell through. “I ask you now, when will prayer be enough? I have as much faith as any here, none can deny it, for I know that Old Myarsa most surely holds our salvation. But we are Conservators, that is the title that has been given to us by our ancestors, and in order to honor that conservation there are certain necessities of living. Metals. Medicines. Magics. These materials could be within our grasps."

He met eyes with those congregated to hear him speak, and they with him. “So I ask you now, to join our voices. To sing with me, that together our song might carry to the ears of those most gracious above.”

The crowd broke out in hymn, and Leça along with them. The hum from their chest resonated out in the air, and for a moment they shut their eyes and felt whole.

When Leça opened them again, their gaze landed on a pair of figures they did not recognize. The two stood tightly together, cloaked. They held no hunch to their shoulders, their vestments hung too clean, and though they sang with the chorus their voices did not harmonize.

The song came to a close, and the crowd began to disperse. Leça scanned their goings uneasily, and found more faces that they had not seen around the district before.

Even those they did know seemed not to be so singular a body as they first appeared. The people broke away in threes and fours, cliques and bands. Few of them said even a word in goodbye, instead exchanging suspicious glances as they pulled back into the depths of the city to return to the abodes of their respective families.

Leça felt a touch at their shoulder, flinching out of their own head to find that the speaker had approached them. He was a calloused man, with tawny gray hair dreadlocked back in long coils off the top of his head. Wideset and thin, he had the look of one who had held quite a remarkable strength in his youth but had since been bowed by time. “Mikhal, my apologies. You startled me.”

“It happens to the best of us, dear.” Mikhal waved away the apology with an assuaging hand. “I wonder if you would walk with me, back to my home. A steadying arm is always appreciated.”

“Of course,” Leça nodded, holding their elbow out for Mikhal to secure themselves as the two began an ambling walk. “It was a rousing speech you gave, sir.”

“Aye, rousing.” Mikhal intoned ruefully. “I’m afraid it must be so. It is necessary, for these things to be said.”

“Yes,” Leça spoke now with an awkward sort of carefulness, choosing their words one at a time, “Even still, I worry for your meaning to be heard and understood. There were some new folk attending tonight. Folk I did not know.”

Mikhal nodded sagely, “Nor I. I wonder, where they might have come down from. Perhaps you might help me, to assuage this curiosity? The next time we gather, if they are to be in our midst, their names ought be known.”

Leça chewed on the veiled request for a moment as the they approached their destination. Mikhal’s home was a long-held shieling wedged into the corner of the undercity. Patchwork repairs wrote their history across its walls and its fixtures.

“I do not think that appropriate, sir.” Leça hung on her answer, glancing up as though she might be seen through the district’s ceiling. “If they are of the sort you expect, the sort from on high, then I know that our shared faith will guide them towards what is best for this city. What is best for our people.”

“You have a hope that I envy.” Mikhal’s voice took on a subtle note of concern as he crossed the threshold into his darkened doorstep. “I hope for all of our sake you are correct.”

Leça gave the most reassuring look she could, coupling it with a gentle squeeze to the elder’s shoulder. Mikhal nodded his thanks to her, and the two parted. 

Leça made her way back through the shadows that eve. She walked, and watched others walk alone just as she did.

Love for One’s Own (III)

106th of Nemulum, 313 EA

Peyr Myarsa

Leça settled into the relieving warmth of their home, basking in the lively sounds of family. At the center of the table sat a hale stew, steaming, and gathered around it were Leça’s father Gustaw, as well as their young niece and nephew Kasha and Leo. Amongst all of them Leça carried their weariness in their back rather than on their face, and so the familiar cradle of their chair at the dinner table was enough to soothe them after a long days standing.

“I did too see it!” Leo wiped at his nose with a sleeve, calling across the table to his sister in the unrestrained pitch of childhood. “It was a fox, I know it was! It was hairy all over, but not like beaver hair, like person hair, and it was red with red eyes, and it walked right on top of the water, just like in the stories! It was out in the swamp, I saw it!”

“Foxes don’t live in the swamp,” Kasha retorted with a sibling’s contrarianism, “they live under it with the Myarsans. Right grandpa?”

Gustaw looked up from his soup as though he couldn’t possibly have expected to be asked a question. “Hm? Foxes? No, no, there are no foxes, not anymore. If they ever existed, I’d expect they’d have been drowned by the swamps, just like everything else from Old Myarsa.”

“Mepka saw it too, it wasn’t just me.” Leo gave a dejected pout.

“Could the swampers have made the foxes into mud demons?” Kasha took on a look of nervousness at her own thought, a nervousness that began to creep over her brother as well.

“It was probably a dog.” Leça chimed in before her father could continue to miss what the children needed to hear. “There are a lot of dogs in the swamp, just like there are dogs in Peyr.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” Gustaw leaned in to the children with the sort of whisper that children could not help themselves from. “The swamp is a dangerous, damning place kiddies. Wandering out into the swamp on your own means y’ain’t have no city around to hold you up.”

There was a cold pause, as the sentiment wrapped it’s way through the children’s young fears, before Leça forced herself to burst out in a short laugh. “But you’ve nothing to worry about. We’re kept safe here from the swamp, by the conservators’ hands. You’ll be safe.”

Kasha and Leo exchanged a look, and then warmed back to their chatter. Leça smiled, and ushered them along into the next room to begin cleaning up.

They found their father later that night, working quietly to himself to hang bunches of aster to dry.

“You know you really ought not to play ghosts at the children like that.” Leça started, the sagging scent of the flowers filling their senses, “I’m sure that Alisja and Marek would not appreciate you filling their sleep with nightmares.”

“T’was no bit of play, my dear.” Father picked at the stems, the underneath of his fingernails staining green. “They need to know the dangers of this world, too soft they are. Liable to get themselves hurt, playing silly.”

“They’re going to be alright.” Leça spoke with a convicted optimism that they had hashed out against their father all through their life. “Peyr places its faith in them, and that’s not nothing. It’ll take care of them.”

Love for One’s Own (IV)

129th of Nemulum, 313 EA

Peyr Myarsa

The underbearing streets were thrown into chaos and tumult.

Muck rained down all around Leça. Water ruptured up through cracked and rotted foundations, and in that water was an intent to drown. Mephits, demons vile and impish, set upon them. They tore at homes with impunity, and in their masses they drug the people of the district below and into the heart of the swamp.

“We have to find them! We have to find them!” Leça registered Marek’s hysterics just long enough to feel it’s panic graze them. Alisja was with them, though she suffered a deadening focus that kept the fear off of her. They all ran through those streets at a sprint, shielding each other as they did.

Lines of conservator’s streamed down from above, cold-wrought iron axes in hand. They slashed wildly, and where they connected the mossformed creatures burst in grime that spattered out to coat the district’s streets.

Leça’s feet slipped out from under them, cracking their skull hard against the railing of a staircase. Their head rung as pain throbbed between their temples. 

Marek hesitated, stuttering back a step towards their prone form as his wife kept on their track. Leça waved a hand away from him, the urgency and the ringing between their temple making the word ‘go’ feel unnecessary.

Marek took the cue with a look of contrition, continuing on towards his children and inso doing leaving Leça behind.

From the ground, they could see a hovel nestled into a corner of the district’s overhang. On its stoop, an elder figure, hunched, failing to bat away a tide of mud demons.

Leça saw a cadre of conservators, splattered in filth and peppered by their own blood, thundering through between their bouts of demon slaying. Leça saw one of the guards, a man not much older than herself, start towards the cries. Leça saw another guard, shrewd looking with a sense of recognition towards who was calling out, press her hand into the chest of the first.

The whole troop stuttered for a moment.

“Heretic” was the only word that was said between them, and then as one they moved on past Marek as though he were not drowning.

Leça stumbled forwards on shaken feet, but by the time they reached the home the wise man could speak no more.

Love for One’s Own (V)

129th of Nemulum, 313 EA

Peyr Myarsa

Leça burst out from darkness into sunlight that was somehow more blinding. They rolled out through the forced hatch, scraping their knees along the wooden planks. Their breath came to them only sporadically, and the muscles in their arms burned from helping lift people up the ladder to this safety.

All all around them, people of the lowest district streamed up out of the cracks in their flee from the swamp’s reach. They stumbled, mostly, or huddled down against the ground, disoriented.

“Leça!” They heard their name cried out amidst the panicked calls echoing all around.

Slow to react, Leça felt the wrap of Leo & Kasha’s young arms in a hug around their back and side before they fully registered them.

“Grace of old Myarsa,” Alisja joined, along with their father and her husband both looking worse for wear, “You made it out.”

“I got out,” Leça repeated from their fugue, their gaze drifting out into the raised district they now found themselves in.

“We thought-” Tears stained Marek’s face, “When you fell, I didn’t see you again.”

“I got out. I got some others out too.” Leça spoke with more clarity, properly hugging the kids back as their expression went crestfallen. “Some.”

Alisja read Leça’s tone an instant. “Marek, take the kids off for a second.”

“No!” Kasha whined, “We have to stay together.”

“It’ll just be a moment, not far.” Alisja reassured, helping her son and daughter up and passing their clutching hands to their fathers.

Marek nodded, pulling the children away to leave space for Leça to speak.

“Who was it?” Gustow asked in a gentle low, resting his hand on theirs like he had done when they were still young.

“Mikhal,” Leça exhaled the fallen name and began to tremble. “Mikhal was brought down. He was covered in the demons, I saw the muck streaming down his throat to drown him.”

Gustow let out a disconcerting sob.

“I saw something, some of the conservators.” Leça continued, noting the expectant fury forming behind their sister’s eyes, “They wouldn’t help him. They called him heretic, they let him die.”

“Those sanctimonious bastards.” Alisja hissed, her fists balled. “They ought to have been the ones to have drowned.”

“Keep that down,” Leça glanced around nervously, but through the chaos they were hardly being noticed.

“It’s true, and you know it.” Alisja’s acerbic tongue cut into Leça.

“That’s not how things are meant to be, though.” Leça’s voice rang in hollow unease. “That there are those amongst the conservators who would let a member of their community die, over words, it’s a perversion.”

“They are never the ones to drown.” Gustaw intoned with resignation.

“Well then this must be brought to the attention of the high abbess.” Leça spoke again with a cracked conviction. “The high abbess could carve out any rot in the conservators, if she only knew where it was.”

Leça’s view drifted up from calamity, up through streaming sunlight to the peak of the city of Peyr, and along that drift the distance between that height and them seemed insurmountable.

Love for One’s Own (VI)

134th of Nemulum, 313 EA

Peyr Myarsa

“Lady abbess!” Leça called out across the warbling din in lashed-together hope. “Lady abbess! Please, we must speak!”

The faces in their immediate vicinity turned to show only withering irritation. The liturgy which they had wormed their way into had only just let out, filtering from the worship-hall onto the deck of a level on Peyr’s ziggurat that Leça had never before tread. Those around were draped in fine robes, and many carried with them axes of rarified iron. Leça, by grimy contrast, felt fully disarmed. In this moment they were still among the people of Peyr, as they always had been, but at this great height they felt themselves a grating force.

They could not afford to let that feeling keep them from their intent, though, and so they pushed through it as they pushed through the throng itself. Their quarry passed into view only momentarily, the high abbess ascending a staircase to her chambers as she waved behind to the onlooking devotees in vacant pleasantry.

“Highness!” Leça’s cries continued well after it was clear that they would not be heard. “Lady Abbess!

The hand to stop Leça’s advance was precise, delicate and clad in a ring of sharpened iron. It pressed into their sternum with a nauseating force. “What business have you with the high abbess?”

“I-” Leça felt themselves crumbling as their momentum fell out from under them. “There are things that I know, things that the abbess must know.”

The figure that Leça spoke to was highborn, undoubtably, her angular features blooming from the pressed garb of a conservator priestess. “There are few things the high abbess of reclamation is not abreast of.”

Leça found themselves stuttering, as though the air had suddenly gone rotten. “I’m sure that’s true, but even still. I must speak to her. I must.”

“You are not of a class to approach her eminence. You draw attention by your mere presence here.” The conservator lead Leça over to a secluded corner, ringed in potted trees. “But perhaps there is another way to get your message to her. I have the ear of the High Abbess, on occasion.”

Leça wavered a moment, untrusting, “If I were to share with you what I have seen, you would pass it along to her?”

“Yes.” The conservator’s words dripped out, “My faith demands that I would, if it truly is a matter deserving of the high abbesses attention.”

Leça drew in long breath, sighing out in staccato exhalation. “I am Leça Skhadova, I live in the third ward of the base. When this story has been told, from me to you and from you to the Abbess, please come and find me. My heart will not rest until I know that the wrong I am to share with you has been rectified.”

“Leça, my name is Niolett Glarka.” The conservator placed a cloying hand on Leça’s. “You have my word, I will come to find you at your home.”

Leça nodded, though the certainty they had hoped for moldered away, as they launched into the tale of their people's abandonment and Marek’s loss for the priestess Niolett.

Love for One’s Own (VII)

157th of Nemulum, 313 EA

Peyr Myarsa

The conservator was an unassuming man, and not one that Leça recognized from the understreets. He was square-jawed, with hair that would have been described as shaggy if it had been allowed to grow without cropping. His robes were kept well, free of mud, though there was a fraying near the boots. Leça was of a height against this man, and yet could not help but feel the elevation of his station against theirs.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Can you please explain what is going on?” Leça spoke from a disconcerted position at the doorway of their home, their sister fuming behind.

“The whole affair is really quite clear.” The conservator spoke in flat, dripping tones. “It has been determined that your faith would benefit from time spent in penance. I am here to escort you to the the…”

“You won’t!” Alisja burst out, pushing past Leça and stumbling the conservator back onto the shaded street, “You can’t take them, I won’t let you!”

Eyes from all around shifted to the scene as Leça hurried out to join them.

The conservator, still yet to have given his name, placed two fingers in his mouth to give a short whistle. At his call, a sudden number of figures made themselves known from around corners.

“You’d do best to come quickly and quietly.” The conservator motioned back to the doorway, where Leo and Kasha had snuck up and now stood paralyzed. “There is no need for your whole family to be dragged out all for your consortion with open blasphemers.”

“Alisja,” Leça spoke calmly against their sister’s roiling fury. “Back off. Go to the kids, to father. I’ll handle this. It will be okay.”

Alisja tore back and forth, between the home they had shared as a family and them now stepping away.

The growing crowd of conservators enveloped Leça, hands reaching out to grasp their arm roughly. They were legion, indeterminable from one another, and Leça was swept up by the force of their misbelonging in the district as it pushed them all out wordlessly.

Love for One’s Own (VIII)

157th of Nemulum, 313 EA

Peyr Myarsa

Leça was drawn through the swamp, under shamed sunset light.

“The temple isn’t so bad.” The conservator set to escort them to their penance had introduced himself as Irec. His robes were well cared for, though they fit a bit too snugly, and he wore his axe over his back rather than gripping it in his hand. He was a clean-cut man, and in his voice he carried a stone steadiness. “It’s a place to reflect, to stay close to what conservatorship is meant to protect.”

“I’m sure it is,” Leça replied with an unpracticed disingenuity.

Looking back over their shoulder, they could see Peyr in the middle distance.

It had been so long since they had left the city they had almost forgotten the shape of it. Square corners, rising up irrefutably high from the ground below. Ziggurat layers stacked on layers, each pressing down on those below. A peak, gilded by sunlight, which was kept a great distance out of reach from the base that they had known so intimately.

Leça had spent much time watching from Peyr, but it was only now that they had been forced to it’s exterior that they could recognize the daunting form of it’s fullness.

And yet, when they looked at the whole they could not help but recognize something else as well. There was movement, mass movement, along the ground and on the platforms of the lowest level of the city. They saw the people of the understreets, their people, as they gathered and conversed and cared for one another. Last of all, they saw watchers on towers that they themselves had tread, shouldering responsibility for the protection of their family from the dangers that they were now exposed to.

“The people at the temple, what are they like?” They asked suddenly, after a long beat of silence.

Irec seemed surprised by the question. “Most are from the understreets. They seem to stick together, to get through their time there. They’re much like you, I’d expect.”

“These people are the last of all peoples.” Leça remembered, as the sunset expired behind them and they made their way through cool night towards this new community of penitents, “And to endure this life, one must hold on to a love for one’s own.”