Home.
The word felt foreign to her... even worse the world did.
Streets she had played on, walked on, even fought on seemed hollow and empty; her footsteps blazing through the silence like staccato gunshots. The air was still warm and the leaves on the trees still rippled in the tepid gale, yet no living creature stirred, no burst of laughter or song, no clang of spear on shield, no slap of arms clasped in friendship.
Lanostre felt dead, worse it felt violated, patrolled by invaders with hooked noses and chilled bones. The goddess riled at having such men in her city and her aegis waned around them. She smiled at the thought... even in defeat, Lanostre's very ether fought back.
How it would break her Lady's heart to see her city so! Her people fought on the other side of the world under banners they did not believe in. She too bore a Varyan crest on her chest and soon would follow them into the abyss. It sat ill with her. To loose contact with so many great warriors only to send comparative children in their wake. Nevertheless duty called and she would follow.
Even the view had changed.
It was still breath taking, the majesty of the twin peaks bursting defiantly from the ice stealing any words from her throat. She stared hungrily open mouthed, drinking it all in with a rabid hunger. If she stared enough she could sear this image into her retinas and gaze upon it for ever more; but try as might she could not ignore the stain.
A deep blackness seemed to ooze from the distant shadow of Mangagrad, gnawing at the pure ice around it, devouring it and defiling it, unfeeling and uncaring. Sapharan may tower above it, majestic and proud but the cancer was already eating it from within. She looked at her companions and barely suppressed her sneer as she gazed upon Mother Tatiana, hat tilted at a jaunty angle... a slight slouch to her stance. T'saeran's calling themselves Lanostran. Unwittingly she ran her hand across her armour tracing the scar that ran across her back from the time her father had decided his point about her poor performance had necessitated the emphasis of a horse whip.
She had no idea!
Her other companion had the bearing of noble Lanostran stock and the pedigree to match. His father's name was a whispered legend, a general and a successful one, and she would be the last to confess (but could not help but admit) she had been in awe of his son upon their first meeting. His skill was prodigious and his talents seemingly endless yet as the son of a general he had wanted for nothing. She suspected a softness in Galahad, that came with the luxuries of wealth and talent, which Astraea had long since lost; beaten out of her at the hands of a bitter father in his wrathful indignation that he had no son.
Now would be her moment, she had followed in her father's footsteps and become an inquisitor. She had passed, she had found her gift and fought her trials and was returning home. Surely that would thaw the ice of his heart, surely finally she would sense some pride in her father.
She remembered how it had been when she had killed her daemon, thrown its head at her feet. she had opened up her mind expecting love and pride and felt a hollow empty nothingness. She almost wished she had felt hatred, anything but nothing... he looked upon his only child and felt nothing. It had broken her heart, cleaved it in two, her own thoughts a stabbing pain in her mind... perhaps she would never make him proud.
Her feet followed her own path and it was a little while before she realised she had left her companions behind. This time surely would be different.
The door was up ahead and every ringing footstep sounded like her own funeral march. She was Lanostran and she did not fear death but by the Lady she feared the raw pain of her own broken heart. She feared that empty void in her fathers heart more than every daemon in the black glacier.
Reaching the door she swallowed and knocked 3 times on the wood
"Who comes to our door?" her father's voice was a whip crack through her mind. It had been too long, how she hated him but how she wanted to love him.
"One that requests your hospitality." her voice quivered but she knew the reply.
"You are not welcome" his words were a slap across the face and she stepped back in shock. Her world was collapsing around her and she grabbed at the nearest branch
"Father... pl" she stammered.
"You are not welcome here, Astraea. Go back to the shit stain of a city you call home"
"This is my home!"
"It cannot be, you are not welcome in it" he was ice cold again, pure martial discipline and she felt like she was drowning in it's icy depths. She couldn't breathe, to be turned away like this. It was too much... to hard. Then she stopped. What would she do if an invader took her home. She felt clarity
"Then I must retake my home, as honour requires" her voice was sad but defiant, she would not be ignored... not today... not now
The door exploded outwards and her father was framed in the doorway. Even so many years later, power and strength radiated from him and fury seemed to burn in his eyes yet her eyes could not help but notice the limp in his left leg and the way his spear was now more cane than weapon.
"You threaten my door. After spending your nights spread-eagled on your back like some back alley slut and for a T'saeran no less and you dare show your face here."
She reeled bemused
"What?"
"Father Thorus told us came to our door. Lady how we wept. Our child spending her nights in the company of some T'saeran. Your mother fled to the east for the shame. Ahhh but for this blasted leg of mine I'd avenge our honour and kill the pair of you. You and this"
He spat
"Antonin"
She shook her head bewildered
"He's my teacher father."
Her father spat again
"A T'Saeran teaching fucking. Well I suppose they teach every fucker el..."
She reacted in anger, indignant at his lack of faith... furious that he thought so little of her. With a flick of her foot she whipped his spear from under him and even as he toppled to the ground sank her elbow into his nose hearing the bones crunch, feeling his warm blood on her sleeve.
His hands were at her throat but she didn't care, didn't care that in his rage he'd kill her, that even if she showed him, he may not stop.
She reached for his nose her other hand reaching into her pocket to grab her talisman, fingers clenching around the hilt of a small figure of a woman hands outstretched.
Ether seemed to burn inside her, warmth spreading up one arm across her chest and out the other. She gave a small shudder of bliss... that warmth. She was in a far away place where she could not even feel the breath was crushed from her lungs by a vicious blow to her diaphragm. The power built in her chest and she reached out weaving to connect bone with bone, working to turn back the tides of blood flowing freely over her fingers.
It was sudden... the bone fused back with a loud crack and her father gave a cry of shock and anguish and released her his hands clutching at his healed nose and she used his momentary surprise to stand.
She looked down into his wide eyes, indignation coursing through her
"That's what he teaches me, you stupid old git"
Even as she whirled round scooping up her fallen spear and shield and began to run back towards Bridgetown she felt his emotions. Maybe she was wrong... but she thought he might just be proud of her.