kurotawa

Mayalaran picked her way alone carefully along the obsidian ground. Up ahead were the lights of the Inkspren city where her dropoff for the Ghostbloods was scheduled. She would need a disguise. She steeled herself.

   "Radiant" she whispered. I need to hide my face."

There was no reply. It was harder and harder to get Radiant to come out these days.

   "Please Radiant. You know my lightweaving isn't good enough to fool a Reacher. I'm going to need your help."

   "And your traveling companion?' Radiant whispered softly.
   
The response took Maya aback for a second. Was that a joke? Surely she didn't mean... Maya liked to think of herself, and of Radiant, and well a few others, as different people. They were different people! But that was just - she wasn't that crazy! She knew there was only one body. How dare Radiant!

   "Your companion Maya." Radiant said. "The shadow behind you. How should I disguise her?"
   
Maya spun around. Nothing buy empty rock. Nothing. A sudden fury filled her. She spun back around. What was Radiant playing at? Sometimes she did this and then Maya could no longer stand it, and often after that Radiant would disappear for weeks on end. She couldn't afford that now. She forced herself not to think, to think about breathing slowly, in and out, the warm alien air of Shadesmar.

   "I want us to work together Radiant, but if you play tricks it's hard for me."
   
   "Shallan. No tricks. Wait I will help" Radiant's voice was firm, confident. "But I need you to do something for me. I need to you hold all our gemstones in your hand. All of it. And look behind you."
   
Feeling a fool, Maya emptied her precious pouch of diamond bromes into her palm. Already the gemstone's light had bled away during this short trip in Shadesmar. She again turned around. If anyone was watching now, would they have any doubt she was mad? She looked down at her outstretched palm. Without consciously meaning to, she was breathing in light from a brome. She realized the stormlight coursed through her body. Remain standing. Do not turn away. The first brome spent. With concern, she recognized she was breathing in from a second stone. She couldn't be, no she must be lightweaving - what?

   "Let the storm fade Shallan"
   
Maya let here lightweaving fade. Five paces in front of her stood cultivationspren. Her body was wrapped with sturdy brown vines that seemed charred, as if in a forest fire, but yet whole. She stood straight, staring her in the eyes as Maya stared at hers. Her eyes were scratched out. The bromes in Maya's hands exploded in Stormlight.

         * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

She was running toward a corner in the halls of Urithiru. Someone had shouted "fire." She could smell smoke in the air, and another smell like burnt lime. She rounded the corner looking to the right. She stopped in her tracks. Twenty paces ahead a woman bent over, her back mostly turned to Shallan. She bent of the fallen body of a man in Kholin blue. The air reeked of smoke though only a thin haze in the air. In a circle around the two, think lines of fire edged up along the walls, almost a second burning strata of the rock, and as it crept the rock fell to dust, consumed.

Mist shimmered beside the right hand of the fallen man. As if waiting, the woman picked the shardblade from the floor in her left hand. In a shockingly acrobatic flourish, the woman straightened, turned to face Shallan, and raised the stolen blade high in the air. Shallan knew that blade, by any rights a broadsword nearly as tall as the woman herself, it's edge wicked and sinuous. She could hear the blade screaming, it would be screaming to her forever.

The Herald's blood-red hair was braided in a style Shallan had never seen her wear, but her coat and skirt were of an old-fashioned Vedan cut all to familiar, unfitting for a killer. In her gloved right hand, she raised a second broadsword, reddish, thick, but this one sized for killing a man.

   "Well child, Tet Balat told me about your father. So have become a murderer too. I wonder if it would shock you to know how many I have murdered, how many I have burnt, and rot, and destroyed. The legiona that I have melted skin, the cooked flesh, then powdered bone. But that was duty, something for a woman to understand, not a child. That was war. But what is there but duty's opposite in a child, who consigned the mother who loved her, who gave her flesh, to torture. To hooks, to flame, to the ENEMY."
   
Pattern shimmered in Shallan's hand. She could see the blond hair of the fallen man, previously block by Chana's back. She could not see his eyes. With an incredible speed, as if launched from a catapult, Chana slid towards her both blades still upraised. Shallan-Mayalaran's vision filled with pain and fire.