Edylia

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The Reverant Ghost Warning: Child death, Allusions to Suicide, and general Violence Edylia came into the world too soon, and left it just as quickly. Small for her age, she spent several weeks under Merlin's diligent and desperate care, before passing into the world beyond. Unable to touch her loved ones, to speak to them, she watched them mourn her loss. It is a terrible thing, to stand barely a foot away from someone in such deep, scarring despair as she observed and do nothing. So she mourned with them, standing shoulder to shoulder with her mother as her lilting voice sent prayers of protection after her departed daughter, thinking on the world that could have been hers. She watched the clan pull together in sorrow, watched them slowly drift back to their usual places in life as time passed. They started to tell jokes again, to roll their eyes and needle one another. All but Kotissa. Edylia wasn't sure what she had expected her mother to do; she had never known Kotissa as anything but a gentle, comforting figure in life, a crumpled shadow in death. But it was painful, nonetheless, to see her wilt, so she tried to change it. She tried, again, to advertise her presence, to let her mother know that she was not alone. She brought her flowers from the drifting magic of the world she existed in, that strange realm that she couldn't break free of. The flowers, of course, could no more pass into her mother's realm of reality than she could, but it made her feel better to try. A full year after Edylia's death, Kotissa left Ista for good, unable to bear the memories of hopes and dreams abandoned, and for a time, Edylia was left alone. She watched the clan pass around her, flowing through life's moments and victories, unable to communicate with any of them. She sank into herself, settled in a far, forgotten corner of the lair, and stared into eternity. She couldn't sleep - the dead do not dream - but she found she could shut herself off from the world, turn off her senses, and left the world behind.

Why am I here? she wondered. Why have I been abandoned. Should I not have gone to the deities? Did I make some mistake?

"No mistake," a voice said, just by her ear. She turned, trying to catch a glimpse of it, but it slipped behind her again, and she could feel it's laughter in her bones. "You are trapped in between, as I am. The deities have abandoned us here for their amusement. Help me, and I will help you. Together, we can be whole again."

It giggled again, a rumbling rolling thing, always just beyond her sight.

"Who are you? How did we get here?"

"I am a friend, my dear. A friend, who has wandered so long it has forgotten it's own name. Help me, and they will see you again."

Edylia longed to say yes, to know what it was to exist with another, instead of alone, but she hesitated.

"Why can't I see you?

"It's part of my curse, my dear. Trapped here forever, unable to be seen. Don't you want to help me change our fates?"

"I...

Yes, her mind said. Yes, I want to see and be seen. I want to become... Become what? A god, her mind replied. They pushed me aside, so I will rule myself. I shall take their power for my own and shape it to my will.

She frowned. She'd never had a thought like that before. A god? Why would she want that kind of power? All she'd ever wanted was to be seen, acknowledged. Wasn't it?

With the power of the deities, you would be seen. You would be known. You would be worshipped and revered.

The voice in her mind was exultant. It showed her the world as she could make it: gentle, soft. Fierce, fearful. It showed her possibilities beyond anything she'd ever dreamed before: riches and adventure, love and friendship and true, perfect happiness, and she almost sobbed with how desperately she wanted it.

That's it, said the voice in her mind. All you have to do, is let me in...

She closed her eyes, nodded. She felt her mind begin to drift, loosing the skydancer's shape she'd clung to for so long. And why had she? She was no more a dragon than she was a swan; no more a being of flesh and form than the next spirit.

She was the sea, she was the sky, she was... She was... Finally she was drifting free. The voice would guide her. Her new friend would lead her. All she had to do was lend it her power, and it would make her happy. That was all she'd ever wanted. All she'd ever wanted...

"Please, please I don't know what to do."

A new voice, in the clan beyond. Edylia started, her consciousness leaping back at the sound, but then she slid back into the darkness. Why should she care, anymore? She was so far beyond all of that, now.

"Please, I don't want to listen to you anymore. They were nice to me, they were nice to me, please. I don't want to hurt them!"

Who was that? Was that Alcia?

It doesn't matter. She's not my problem anymore.

That's not my voice, Edylia thought. That's not me, I didn't think that.

What's the difference? the voice asked. You've never cared about Alcia before.

Alcia was crying, now, crumpled to the ground. Her pleas had dissolved into mumbles, begging that was drowned out by the laughter in Edylia's head.

Don't forget, little Soulwatch, you wanted this! You let me in! See what I can do with your power? See how much stronger I am, now? She can't resist me anymore. I'll destroy her from the inside out."

She tried to struggle. She screamed and thrashed and wailed, as much as a disembodied spirit could, but all the while the voice laughed and Alcia cried, and Edylia's struggles grew weaker and weaker, until eventually her strength failed altogether. The buzzing in the back of her mind grew steadily louder, resonating through her spectral form and corrupting what little vision she had. Static pulsed across the world, and she lost herself to it.

"That's it, the voice crooned, slicker than poison, You know you can't fight me anymore. Just let go, let it all go, and I promise you'll be free..."

She never knew how long she drifted, just how far she slipped into the Void. Time had no meaning there, no meaning for her. She was weightless, blind, and deaf, existing and not existing; she was real and she was a dream.

The screaming brought her back.

"This is my clan, fiend! You shall not have it!"

The creature's concentration broken, Edylia found herself thrust suddenly back into a dimension just above the living, in the midst of a battlefield. She gasped for air she didn't need (and couldn't get so far beneath the waves), and for a moment simply watched the chaos unfold.

Vela was attacking something. Something huge, with rippling scales that drifted in and out of her vision and a long serpent's tail that thrashed side to side like a fish. The guardian had her claws in it's side, was ripping and gouging as best she could, but though she kept her grip, it was as though she was trying to bite through stone. The monster roared it's anger and tried to smash her against the walls of the lair, but didn't seem to be really hurt.

In the lair, Lafiris and Arfur were curled around one another, heads together, talking. Their voices - already muted by the distance between one realm of reality and another - were swallowed completely in the noise of a battle they could neither see nor hear, and for a time Edylia stared between the two scenes in confusion. How could they exist, side by side?

Vela screamed as the creature sank it's fangs - more like a shark than a dragon, with it's curious extending mouth - into her shoulder and tore at the muscle there. She thrashed, trying to loosen it's grip, but the thing only smiled around it's mouthful and began to wind it's long, sinuous tail around her. She started to choke, coughing and scrabbling at anything she could reach, beating her wings furiously to try and dislodge the thing.

She was going to lose. Edylia could see her weakening as the monster began to crush her ribcage.

And then there was light; beautiful, blinding light that made the creature scream and release Vela in an instant, slithering away into some other dark corner of the lair. The light faded, and Edylia whooped for joy, the sound echoing in her mind.

To her surprise, Vela jumped. She turned towards her - Not possible, her mind screeched, She's never seen me before, she hasn't now, she hasn't shehasn'tshe -

Vela's eyes - shadowed and bloodshot from her ordeal - focused on Edylia. Shakily, she smiled.

"Hello, little one. I've been waiting for you."

---

It took months of coaching before Edylia realised that she was the one who had conjured the light. Vela and Aramoana - who, she discovered to her delight, could at least hear her when she focused her thoughts - worked with her every day, honing her skills.

"If we had more time," Aramoana assured her every day, "I would take you back with me to the Place of Gifts and teach you how to be a true Soulwatch. Then you could travel with me all across Sornieth."

She acted as though Edylia's soul-link to Ista - forged in blood and death - was some great curse that would always weigh at her, and in many ways she was right. Edylia would never know the sun, or the wind and the rain, or feel the heat of the Waste or the electric tang of the Expanse, but she found she didn't really mind anymore. She had a purpose, after all, something she could do even from beyond the veil, and that realisation lifted her heart more than any sight could.

Her strange friendship with Baeldiin and Issor came later. Three broken souls drawn together by the water, adrift in the sea of reality. Aramoana didn't approve, of course - study, for her, was everything - but Edylia found she liked Baeldiin's careful concern, Issor's sarcastic and caustic sense of humour. They couldn't hear her, which made offering her own opinions difficult, but they could see her, and both were sharp-witted enough to pick up at least the gist of what she wanted to tell them. Sometimes Vela even came to translate, when Edylia was angry with them, for example, and wanted to be sure they Understood.

Her power would never equal Aramoana's, of course; there were some spells only the living could do, but she discovered that that worked both ways. Aramoana didn't know when another dragon was going to die, that wasn't her jurisdiction. Apparently, it was Edylia's.

The first time it happened, she was terrified. It felt as though some invisible force was dragging her to the dying dragon's side - Dramartis. The ranger who loved her two mates so fiercely, so proud of them and all they were.

She surrendered easily when Edylia touched her claw, slipping away from her body, her weeping lovers, the pain of the wound that had killed her. They stood staring at one another for a long moment, and then Edylia called on the light to swallow them both.

She returned from Beyond alone, unnerved by her new task, but determined to see it through. And to complain about it with Baeldiin, who often found his talents controlling him.

It was a strange existence, really, all in all. But not so bad for a ghost.