The Making of Monsters

Lei walks in memories now, in this clammy, misty morning. They swirl like ghosts around him, whispering in the gray-dark. Churning with words brought back by dark wings.

The first memory is his sister, whose face haunts Lei's nightmares now, who lingers when he awakes.

Siblings don't keep secrets, Lei-Lei.

But its not the Northern outpost, the beast in the metal shell, the creature with its mask pressed against the glass, that Lei thinks about when he thinks about her now. It's the memory of the in-between, the balance, the tipping point between before and—

After.

He was nine. It was a year after the slippery climb, a year of convincing themselves the monster was gone, that the glowing stones were talismen, wards for more than just darkness.

They weren't.

The monster was outside the bedroom door now, pacing, and Isi had snuck inside his room to be with him, had slunk under the bed too. In one of her hands was a jagged knife, the other held tight to him. They had bolted the door shut, but they did not know if it would hold; it was, after all, made out of metal.

"It's not her," she had whispered vehemently beside him. "It just looks like her."

Lei sometimes wonders what Isati would have done had their mother broken down the door that night. If whatever it was she had been so angry about would have boiled over, pushed her inside. He wonders if things would have changed; if Isati would have understood then, while she still could. While she still cared.

Because ten year-old Isati was wrong: the thing outside was, had, and always would be their mother. It's only two years after this that Lei learns that lesson all too well.

But first, suddenly he was ten, and she was eleven, and she was conjuring fire and metal, a little prodigy of smoke and steel... and Mother was so proud.

And on sparring mats, amongst the dust and the sweat, there was a new look in Isi's eyes sometimes, something gleaming there that wasn't before.

"Why aren't you trying?"

Lei's name started to sound different in her mouth; she no longer held his hand.

Then he turned eleven, and there was a flicker of something else in Isi's face. Something only caught in side-glances, an eerie glint even as she continued to wheedle and poke.

"You're still just a kid," she'd hiss, and when she swiped she now drew blood. "Can't even hold a sword right, Mom's going to be so mad—"

And then he Skilled. Eleven and, as Isati had said, still just a kid. He did it at a banquet, with his sister sitting primly beside Mother, hands folded in her lap. He presented Mother with the flower, drifting open and close, because he had thought it was beautiful; he wanted her to see, to be so proud.

But there was no gleam, no meager, cool praise: above the swaying white petals his mother's face had contorted, a hideous mask of monster rage, and, perched next to her, idling in her shadow, Lei saw it:

Isati smiled.

Now there are two days left. Two days until the shadow of that sly smile might fall upon him again, grin in a leering, satisfied way.

But its not his sister's smile Lei lingers on as he paces in the long shadow of Vatra's crescent of mountains. Not since the last letter came. Not any more.

There are some strange looks sent his way as he passes, a mix of recognition and curiosity because, after months at Allayria's side, Lei supposes he too must be recognizable, in his own way. But the looks and whatever errant thoughts that follow them do not disturb him much today, do not disrupt that pearly fog, dislodge the bundle held in his hands.

Lei only stops when he reaches the outskirts of the camp, past the steers and the horses, the runners and the guards. The grass is to his knees here, brushing, golden-brown, against his dark pants. He wanders out into it, toward, without a terrible amount of thought, a copse of trees nestled out just beyond the clamor.

The feel of tree bark is the strongest part of this next memory—strongest, perhaps, because everything else had been buried under a white cloud of thick panic, wild fear.

This one took place after; after he had been fished out of the deathly stench of the sewers; after the banquet and every shimmering, slicing thing that had followed. He was uprooted, in a strange land with strange men who didn't wear black and blue, weren't sworn to his family's honor, but could conjure water and rock with their hands, just like him.

And, amongst their tall shadows, he had been lost, wandering in a strange haze, half limping, half-flinching, the wounds on his back not quite scabbing, not yet mending. And in his head her voice would echo when the fear and shame and everything else seized his insides. Her words spun the world on a tilting, shaking axis, because he dropped the bucket, because he walked too loudly, because he took up too much space, too much attention, too much time—

Beinsho did not touch him when he swayed, did not reach out to steady him. Instead he crouched down on his haunches, hands braced on his knees, so he could peer into Lei's small, blanched face.

"Ground yourself," he instructed as if this was a practice, a technique taught on mats amidst dust and sweat. "Feet at shoulder position, knees slightly bent. Yes, like that, a little further down—you want to lower your center of gravity. Deep breaths out of your nose, nice and slow. Take your hand and set it on the tree. Feel the bark. Hold it there and feel it, tether yourself to it."

Tether yourself to the earth. He didn't exactly smile when Lei managed it, but something quirked along the hard line of his mouth and, after the second, third time, he wasn't even blinking, wasn't even stopping.

"Sharpen the swords, Chaudri," he'd call. "We have a sparring session in half an hour and they need to be ready."

And Lei, hand on the tree, knees bent, would breathe and then sprint after him, all coltish legs, all stumbling feet. Emir Beinsho wasn't a Skiller, honing his talents with the broadsword and pen instead, but he was like earth—solid and steady. Something to tether to.

The ground is damp when Lei kneels now, dew bleeding into his clothes, creeping along the cuffs of his sleeves. He sets the bundle down, unwraps the dark fabric, and sets each item out, one at a time.

A stick of flint; patches of red and purple cloth; a sprig of white ember-lilies; a smooth, black stone; shavings of mossy green tree bark; and a small, golden pin, carved in a Halften insignia.

"To remember us," the commander had said with a slight smile. "Just because you're part of the Paragon's personal guard doesn't mean you aren't still a man of Halften. It was mine, given to me when I was a captain. I should have given it to you a long time ago."

Lei picks the pin up and carefully sets it at the top of the bundle, so it glints in the soft morning light. Below it, he works, weaving the sprig into a circle, tucking the bark, the cloth inside it, the stone set in the heart of the altar.

When he is done, when the bundle is set just right, just so, he strikes the flint, not flinching at the spark, even if his hands shake. He strikes it again, and again, patient and steady, until the red fabric catches, until the sprig dances with flames.

And Lei Chaudri, child of Abadi Chaudri and brother to Isati Chaudri by blood, but son of Commander Emir Beinsho, last of his name, in heart, watches his effigy burn as if he is a man with all the time in the world.

Tether yourself to the earth, Beinsho had said when it felt like everything was unstable beneath Lei's feet, like the first tremor of an earthquake, or the dangerous rumble before a fiery blast. Hunker down and find your center.

I am proud of you.

A/N: I'm sorry, whoever is cutting onions in my apartment needs to stop. This is getting out of hand.

Chapter Notes: Isati taunts her brother in Partisan's "Sisterly Love" and remembers holding the knife under Lei's bed in the aptly-named "Under the Bed" (yes, I am always subtle with my chapter titles), while Beinsho BREAKS ALL OF OUR HEARTS and tells Lei he's proud of him in "Choice."