Pain. White-hot. Searing.  He feels it in his back; he feels it in his bones. 

  “Mythal sulevin,” he utters, and his words are little more than a dying whisper, a last whuff of air from emptying lungs.  He lies staring, eyes wide but unseeing, and the world fades to a grey buzz.  Time is nothing.  Existence is nothing.  Not for much longer. 

       { his heart is caught in a tempest, buffeted by the winds of relief and of loss—}

  He might have grieved over all that was so carelessly or deliberately destroyed, over all that would be lost in the hands of those unworthy to partake of the well, having despoiled Mythal’s sanctum sanctorum as they already did.  But his thoughts were ascending, leaving him, his pain numbing—

  —until She called him back from the static abyss.  He could not be sure how he knew, with every fiber of his being, that it was his goddess.  He could only feel it with certainty, that she was reaching out to from the Beyond, that she looked down with eyes as fierce as the dawn and found his death unsatisfactory.  She would have her due, her will extended and justice done.

  He came back to himself with wracking coughs and a pain blooming in his body and soul.  He dared not look, but instinct, need, and bitterness gnawed at him, and so he glanced at the Well, confirming what he knew in his heart.  The Well stolen, its secrets hoarded by those of unworthy blood.  His mind reeled, dizzy spiritual from numbness as much as from the physical shock overtaking his body.

  His entire soul resisted.  The protestations of his flesh were but weak in comparison.  Mythal had bade him cleave to life, and he knew not what for.  He felt hollow, cold, and a chasm yawned within him like a void that he feared he could never seal.  He had no purpose, now.  No identity — for who he defined himself as had ever been in relation to others.  He had anchored himself to his goddess, and now not even an echo of her remained.

  Left for dead, and left alone.  It might have been easier if he had passed beyond pain, forever.  He didn’t want this — this uncertainty, this aimlessness.  He was a shiftless and grieving thing, picking himself up from the graveyard that had once been one of the holiest sites of all Elvhenan.  But it was Mythal’s hand that brought him back.  Mythal’s hand that gripped tight his destiny…and then cut its strings.  It was her final gift to her one of her devoted.  He would not waste it.  Not ever. 

…And yet freedom meant only failure; failure to his sacred duty, to a mistress he swore to protect and yet who suffered twice over.  He could not guard Her life.  He could not guard Her temple.  He could not guard the Vir’Abelasan.

  Happiness was not a goal he ever needed.  He had once had his duty, his path, his brethren, and he was content.  What could freedom bring him that purpose could not?         P u r p o s e. The word tasted like ashes. He quelled a flare of resentment. Nursing his wounds and ancient hurts would afford him little.  He was not a child, to whine without a mother to usher him along in the right direction.  But still, to see eons of service shattered after so slow and wretched a death broke a part of him in some small but fundamental way.

  He could not bear to look back upon the empty well, the shattered eluvian.  All things that were beautiful were anathema to this wretched world.  He took grim satisfaction at knowing he would not have to endure forever.  Abelas would fade, as would even the lost and crumbling ruins of Elvhenan, and then at last he could find peace.

                       — Until then, he would endure.  His goddess demanded it.