Circle

[bound_by_honor]

Honor figures out how to get herself out of this body, and into the fade. She figures this out when Viandra is eight, when she's been here and been called Viandra for two years. It's easy, actually. She could do it tomorrow. Except for one key factor.

Viandra herself, her mind, is nowhere to be found. Nowhere that Honor can find, anyway.

This is a problem. Honor could leave the body with little issue, but then it would die. And then Viandra would die. Honor - well, she doesn't want to be here. She really doesn't want to be here, actually, but condemning a mortal to death without any ability to defend herself or stop it seems dishonorable and - and wrong. Not while there's a chance that she could potentially put things right. It would be against her nature to flee because a task is difficult.

So she stays. Even though she could leave. Understanding that if the templars knew what she was, they would kill her.

She hates it, hates taking a name that is not hers (she's Honor, that's more meaningful than Viandra's name) but if she wants to keep Viandra herself alive, she has to call herself and respond to Viandra. Viandra's - she's eight, now, they'll let her slip up sometimes because eight year olds sometimes pretend silly things, but when she's older, she'll have no leeway.

So she starts thinking of herself as Viandra. It takes work, and occasionally she gives her tutors funny looks when they refer to her by 'name.' But she adjusts surprisingly quickly. And then she starts adjusting to other things, as well. She listens and learns and works to act mortal, at least the basics. She doesn't understand why demons would want this, and she doesn't care to understand, but she plays the part, because that's the only chance she has of a happy ending for the child. She is a spirit, time is nothing to her, she'll simply take the time to find the girl's spirit, put her back where she belongs, and then go home.

End goal. Focus on the end goal. She just - needs to pay attention, learn whatever it is she needs to learn to be able to locate a little girl lost in the fade on her own, without being able to leave the body entirely to search.

It's agonizing. There could be no worse torture in the world, surely. She'd take physical pain over this, over this - this feeling of helplessness, this feeling of being eternally trapped. There is no escape, there is no companionship, she's alone, surrounded by mortals who don't understand and who she must keep at an arm's length to prevent discovery. She's miserable.

And then, quite unexpectedly, she makes a friend.

-----

"Can I sit here?" asks a boy she recognizes vaguely from her classes, peering at her from under messy brown hair.

Viandra looks up at him from her book. It's about spirits, she's not really supposed to be reading something this advanced, at her age - ha! - but she hasn't been caught yet. And they'll think her precocious, nothing more. It's quite safe to read. Also mostly incorrect, but that's fine.

"I would be concerned if you were unable," she replies.

The boy laughs like she said a joke, and sits. Viandra - doesn't understand, but all right.

"What are you reading?" he asks.

"A book."

"Well, obviously. But what's it about?"

She looks at him and blinks. "... Spirits," she admits.

"Isn't that - really advanced?"

"Sort of," says Viandra. Not for me, she doesn't add. This is child's play. Literally. Ha, ha.

"That's really cool!"

"... It is?"

"Yeah! You can do such cool things with spirits, I heard it from an older apprentice."

"Like what?" asks the spirit. She knows what she can do, certainly, but she'd like to know what the appropriate constraints are.

"Like heal people! Wynne works with spirits, and she healed a scrape I had last week! It was so cool!"

"That does sound useful," agrees Viandra.

"Yeah," says the boy, nodding sagely. He then looks at Viandra critically. Viandra squirms a little, under his gaze. "Are you going to be a healer, too?"

... There's an idea.

"I want to," she says, sincerely.

"Oh, that's so cool! I want to throw fireballs when I'm older!" declares her companion.

"What's the point of it?"

He looks at her like she's stupid.

"What is there in here to set on fire?" she clarifies.

"Not in here, silly. Out there!" He motions to the nearby window.

"... In the sky?"

"No! Outside of the tower. I can set bad people on fire and then people will stop being bad!"

"What about the good people that are hurt?" asks Viandra reasonably.

"... That's your job! You can heal things that are good, and I can burn things that are bad!"

"I suppose," she muses.

"It'll be fun! C'mon, don't you want to?"

Viandra looks at him, impassively. She's so tired of being trapped in this tower.

"Yes," agrees the spirit.

"That'll be great," he declares. "Jowan and - what's your name?"

Honor. "Viandra."

"Jowan and Viandra, mighty adventureres!"

Despite herself, Viandra smiles.