*COMPLETE* Allayria promised to do what it takes to stop the Jarles, to make the ugly decision. She thinks, at last, she understands what the dynast meant. The lesson earned from the top of that lonely cliff and given the dark murky water below.
It...
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"You found that path with your sister, didn't you?"
The Paragon looks at him in the electric glow of their bathroom lamps, the cold light making her seem pale, ghostly.
"If you remember it, so will she."
"Lei-Lei, we have to hurry.Keep up, hold my hand."
"She won't have told the Imperator about it."
Allayria frowns skeptically.
She won't tell because it would get her into trouble.
"Even if she didn't," Allayria persists, "Isati knows."
Isati knows...
"Isi!"
"Isi, wait: put your helmet down."
"Lei—"
"Put your helmet down. Can you see it?"
The monster had caught them outside the safety of their rooms that night, caught them in looming darkness, so their dirty, scraped knees knocked together, and clumsy, block feet stumbled over each other. They scrambled, only as kids can do, running down into the shed, their secret room. They had rehearsed this, planned for this specific occasion. If the monster found them outside of their beds.
Isi had stolen the old helmets, Lei, the practice sticks.
"The brain's the important thing," she had gravely told him only weeks before that, tapping the rusty thing clanging around on her head. "You can live without an arm but not a brain..."
He had shivered then at the thought; he didn't want to lose an arm or his brain.
He only remembers snippets of the chase now, mostly how it felt: the bone-marrow coldness of the night, the pelt of rain against his cheeks, the tight but warm hold of his sister's hand over his, and the flashing darkness of a lightning-lit corridor and the way his breath heaved inside it as the dark thing thundered behind them. They brought the sticks to protect themselves, but when it came to it, they were too afraid.
"We gotta run," she had said, tugging as he started to lag. "We gotta keep going."
They ran outside the palace grounds and the thing screamed behind them. He remembers how his sister's hand tightened over his own, he remembers hearing her over the noises, repeating the words.
We gotta run. We gotta keep going. We gotta run.
They ducked into the narrow places: the small corners, the low entryways. Around fence posts, through thickets and secret shortcuts, known only to kids through the games they play. The helmet was heavy on Lei's head; he kept having to push it up with the fist holding his stick, but then that got caught in a thicket and Isi said, over the thunder and the rain:
