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today.
She was here again, of course.
It had only been a matter of time before all of the Fused managed to make their way back to Roshar. Whether it had been their choice or whether they had been pulled by Odium, they had little control over that. In the span of four-thousand-five-hundred years, Leshwi had begun to think it would never happen. She had begun to think that she'd died, truly died in the Last Desolation, and the Beyond had chosen this half-existence as her eternal Damnation. But no—there were kindnesses out here yet. Leshwi had been eager to return, of course, and noticeably less babbling and insane than the rest of them, so she'd gotten one of the first tickets back to the fight. Raboniel had been slower.
It made Leshwi's heart twist uncomfortably to consider that the Lady of Wishes might have finally lost her last thread of sanity (or worse), but she'd been trained to not care about others, lest they lose their sanity, and so she wouldn't. No matter exactly how much she'd cared before, she wouldn't.
This morning she approached Raboniel's office slowly, despite knowing exactly what time it was. If she was late, perhaps the Lady of Wishes might have had a little less time for her, and this would be over quickly. Observing the strata as she flew down the halls of Urithiru, a trio of Stormform Regals trailing behind her at what they probably thought was a reasonable distance not to incur her wrath. Stupid, stupid, stupid. All of the Singers these days were so storming stupid. It had been so long since the Last Desolation that she couldn't particularly blame them, but after a year they might have learned a trick or two—namely service, over distance, earned the favor of a sane Fused.
Leshwi paused briefly outside when she reached the office, looking the door up and down. As a former member of the Nine, Raboniel would have found herselves one of the best sets of quarters in Urithiru; that was a given. Still, looking at this extensive set of rooms, tended by a variety of workform Singers and with a selection of gemstones and other fabrials arranged neatly in order, documented here and there for clarity, Leshwi had been awed for a short moment. It had been so long since any of them had had something so simple as quarters.
That awe was stoppered and thrown into the recesses of Leshwi's mind a moment later when a deep femalen voice sounded from the desk at the back of the room. "Lady Leshwi," she said, to the Rhythm of the Lost. "I had wondered how long it would take you to come."
Leshwi only smiled softly. "So you're not insane after all. That's going to make this twice as interesting."
Raboniel didn't reply, but Leshwi suspected that only meant she was thinking the exact same thing.
seven thousand years ago.
A chorus of shouts bombarded Leshwi on her left and right, as Singers stampeded past her, all rushing to be the first boots on the ground to a disaster. All while people clamoured for medical kits or weapons or anything that could help them out, Leshwi stood frozen to the spot, watching, not really processing what was happening.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, her voice sang in her head to Betrayal. Haven't you taught yourself not to freeze?
"Are you coming or not?" a voice yelled to Annoyance, startling Leshwi out of her stupor. She blinked furiously as the chaos of the field brought her back to reality, but still she didn't move, letting the swarm engulf her and her fears.
She shouldn't feel like this, she knew—for storms' sake, she was almost fifteen years old. That made her an adult in her people's terms, and adults did not freeze. If she was going to become a Windrunner, one of Honor's favoured soldiers, she would have to be better, faster, stronger, unafraid. But none of this made her move until another figure approached her.
It was a femalen most likely double Leshwi's age, but that made her neither old nor unattractive. Leshwi jerked as she approached, ready to be reprimanded. "I'm sorry," she muttered to Anxiety. "I know I should be out there helping the humans. I know that they're dumb and not used to this planet and they can't cope with highstorms. I know that; I've heard it in enough lectures. Sorry," she added, suddenly concerned that she might be talking to an official or a Radiant. "I just-"
"Some people aren't always ready," the voice said. It was deeper than Leshwi had expected it to be, and she forced herself to not begin humming Anxiety even louder.
"I can do this," she murmured. "I'm sorry," she said, moving to go. As she did, however, a hand grasped her shoulder and she hesitated. Leshwi turned, and finally got a glimpse at the owner of the voice.
She was beautiful, was Leshwi's first traitorous thought. She had a slim figure that scholarform, with its long hairstrands and angular features, naturally suited, making Leshwi's warform feel squat in comparison, and a red topknot of hair atop her head. She had small black eyes which looked at Leshwi with a mixture of disdain and comfort. An odd mixture, but it suited the owner of the voice. "No," she said. "Stay behind with the medical team. We will manage. If you cope well enough over there, perhaps you'll gain an apprenticeship.
Leshwi blinked. "An apprenticeship?" she asked.
The older woman hummed to Amusement. "Not everyone is suited to the battlefield, child. An apprenticeship is not a bad offer." Her Rhythm came through strongly in her words. Leshwi cringed. On a second glance, this woman couldn't have been more than five years older than her. She was not a child.
The femalen hummed. "Alternatively, you could come with me. I don't do a lot of getting in the way of a situation; I write reports, strategies, ways to make our efforts more efficient, and then I present it to the Five. You might benefit from seeing a couple of soldiers in action. That way, you're not going to ruin your chances. What do you think?"
Leshwi paused. "I-," she started. "Um. Where are we going?"
"You'll see," said the woman, turning away from Leshwi and looking out at the Shattered Plains, where lifespren bobbed about, drawn to open rockbuds after the Storm. "My name is Raboniel. I doubt you've heard of me, but I'm head of these operations to help the humans acclimate to Roshar with... minimal violence."
Leshwi nodded. "Leshwi," she said. "Um. I was supposed to be a Squire, but I guess I've lost the opportunity."
The woman—Rabonie—shook her head. "Nothing is lost until we accept that it is. There will be a win to this fight yet."
Leshwi got the distinct impression that both of them were talking about different things, but she ignored it, and instead followed her newfound tutor across the now-silent plains.
six-thousand nine-hundred years ago.
"What do you think?" Raboniel asked to Curiosity.
The two of them sat on a chasm-edge in Narak, watching the Singers below live their daily lives. This high up, with the wind in her hair and the silence of the chasms surrounding them, it was easy to feel that freedom was in reach. Leshwi sat with her head laid on Raboniel's shoulder, eyes half-closed as she thought about the approaching night. And the night after that, and the night after that. They had so long to think about the loves both of them had imagined for so long, and the permission to once and for all go through with it. Passion, after all, was a virtue.
Raboniel's particular... creation, this time, was a battle strategy. Or, more likely, a way to win the war; Vyre. A servant of Odium from humanity, enemy of the Heralds and traitor to the aliens that had ravished their world. A soldier that, once given a Shardblade and given a little bit of a motivation from their God, would be a perfect weapon. Leshwi grinned. "I think it's brilliant." She sat up. "Really, gemheart, where do you come up with these ideas?"
The two locked eyes. Leshwi was suddenly rather conscious of this body she'd chosen to inhabit—the first since her own, though it retained her proud colourings, red and white and black, instead of just two of them as was so common. Raboniel, in contrast, still inhabited her native body; one of the last of the newly-risen Fused to do so. There were rumors that that had earned her Odium's favor, though much of that remained to be seen. Her partner shrugged, apparently unaffected by Leshwi's compliment. "A little creativity. A little convincing," she said to the Rhythm of Appreciation. "Nothing out of the ordinary."
Leshwi hummed to Confidence, thinking on those new revelations that the two of them had come across recently. "You're going to win this war for us, gemheart."
Raboniel attuned a matching Rhythm in response, and the two of them watched the world go by.
four-thousand five-hundred years ago.
Essu was going insane.
It was more obvious than any of them were going to admit, and everyone was doing a spectacularly stupid job of not bringing it up. She attuned the wrong Rhythms, she struggled to recognise fellow Fused, she followed her mother around like a lost cremling, even though the two of them hadn't truly been family in millennia. Odium forbade things like that, even if it was a show of Passion. Because it was also an attachment, and attachments made people go insane.
Lady Leshwi attuned the Rhythm of Satisfaction as she lashed herself upward into the sky, watching the battle wage on below them. They hadn't brought Windrunners today; humanity had expected a minor skirmish. That had been a particularly large opening. It didn't speak of an end to this war, but nothing ever did any more. The days of hoping for a victor to come out on top were long over, even if it persisted in the propaganda. Her robes trailed out behind her, a telltale sign of Odium's favored shanay-im, and though she wore a malen body today, she had tied her hair back in a style that was usually designated to the femalen style. Well, when one changed bodies so frequently, people had to recognise her somehow.
A whooshing sound signified that she wasn't alone, and Leshwi spun—not alarmed, never alarme—relaxing when she saw the figure. It was Hnanan; not a Fused that she particularly liked, but she was her sister. That usually meant that they weren't going to try and kill each other.
"Your wife," Hnanan said in heavily accented Alethi, despite her preference for their native language. "Where is she?"
Leshwi shook her head slightly, looking downwards at the spears being thrown in the battle. She missed those days: mortality was not easy, but it was simple. There was rest guaranteed at the end of it, even if people feared that rest. "Not here. Maybe not in this country. We haven't had a lot of time these past few Desolations."
Hnanan nodded, attuning Conceit. "She has plans."
"She always has plans. She's Raboniel. That puts her one step ahead of the rest of us."
Hnanan hummed in agreement as the two of them watched a spear embed itself in a human's throat. Yes, this was a winning battle, the stragglers picking themselves off with dangerous last stands one by one. There would have been days where she couldn't stomach it, but those were long gone, forced out of consideration by years of pain and suffering and death. "Sister," Hnanan said eventually. "The Desolations. They are... closer. Longer."
"We've always known the Heralds would break down eventually," Leshwi replied offhandedly. "It is a good thing. It takes us one step closer to being people again. No more being mindless spren in between bodies. More being Singers."
"We edge closer to the end," Hnanan said. Leshwi didn't reply.
Something was happening below them, the clamour of the battle changing pace, growing louder and quieter and then louder again. Warpairs intermixed with Fused below them, and as Leshwi squinted, she thought she could make out a human captive being dragged along with them. "What's happening down there?" Leshwi asked. "Do you think they're going to need our help?"
"I wouldn't move if you want to keep the body you're inhabiting," Hnanan said. "It'll be... potent."
Leshwi glanced at Hnanan, trying to make out the meaning of her words. Listeners rarely showed their emotions or their inclinations based on their movements, but those words were a strange puzzle, especially from Hnanan, who was usually straightforward.
Then she recognised a figure on the battlefield.
Storms, how had she not seen her before? It was her once-mate, her wife, clear as day. Raboniel always chose similar bodies; anything to keep the last vestiges of normality still in her line of sight. That top-knot and lean figure was recognisable anywhere, had been recognisable everywhere ever since their first meeting. Her eyes trailed Raboniel's figure as she approached the human captive, one of the few remaining humans in their line of sight.
"What?" asked Leshwi. "Hnan..."
"We need to leave," said Hnanan to Destruction, excited. "I don't want to spend any more time on Braize than I have to."
No. Leshwi didn't either. But that was her wife down there, and Leshwi couldn't let her get into harm's way. Shouldn't let her get into harm's way...
Later, Leshwi would make excuses; Braize was a horrible place, Raboniel could handle herself, they'd all died enough times anyway that one more couldn't truly hurt too much. But that was the singular moment that both of them would point to that ruined the integrity of the cycle of Desolations. Maybe they shouldn't have been looking for integrity anyway; that was of Honor. And yet, Leshwi would justify it in any way she could. For her wife (because once-mate wasn't a good enough term for something that had lasted two-thousand years), for Essu, for her sister, because suffering shouldn't have been a given. But it was.
It was and it always would be. There was no getting out of this life, and there was certainly no getting out innocent.
Hnanan lashed herself up, and Leshwi followed, feeling the wind in her hairstrands and on her face as Conceit reattuned itself in her head. She smiled; maybe she wasn't a Windrunner, but at least she'd gotten this. Selfish, maybe, arrogant, but that all faded in the fact that the sky was hers. Hnanan raced above her as she always did, a remnant from their days as competitive children, but Leshwi didn't lash herself higher, instead watching Raboniel on the ground. She and the human captive had faded to barely a speck, but everyone else had backed away from them, making their figures easy to see. Maybe Raboniel was giving a speech or something. That sounded characteristic of her wife.
Then the human collapsed in front of her.
"Hm," Hnanan said to Craving. "That was not supposed to happen."
"What wasn't supposed to happen?"
"That human dying immediately," said Hnanan. "I am not a Fannahn-im, but I know this. There is no point in releasing a disease on humanity if she's going to soulcast so much into him he will die without spreading it."
Leshwi paused in midair, continuing to hum. "A disease?" she asked.
Hnanan hummed. "Ask your wife. I don't know much more than that."
Right, Leshwi thought. She guessed that made sense. It had been so long since something new and interesting had happened in this war that something was needed to shake it up, and Raboniel had always had ideas before; Leshwi remembered them well enough, even if they were millennia-old strategies. There was little forgetting the atrocities that Raboniel created.
Atrocities, strategies, works of art. All apt words for Raboniel's inventions.
So it shouldn't have, really, felt so horrible. And yet somehow it did.
four-thousand five-hundred years ago.
"What was that on the battlefield?" Leshwi demanded as she stalked--well, flew--into her wife's newly-assigned room.
"Hm?" Raboniel said to Conceit.
"You killed a human with your..." she trailed off, still humming to Craving as she did.
"Oh," said Raboniel. "I haven't seen you recently, gem. I had assumed that could have waited until after."
Both of them paused for a second. "It's good to see you too," Leshwi said eventually, attuning Withdrawal in her words even as her brain pushed her towards Craving or Fury. Raboniel turned back to her work.
"I thought I'd try something new," she said. "It was... easier to watch the others go insane. Lezian, El, Aharat. This is Essu. We need to make this the Last Desolation. I think... this is dangerous. Human psychology and singer psychology are similar enough that it could affect both of us—but I had to try."
"What?" Leshwi asked. "You created something that is going to kill us as well?"
Raboniel hummed to Conceit. "It won't affect you. You have Voidlight, it's just the same as always. We make sacrifices on both sides."
"You're murdering our own people," Leshwi said. She suddenly started; since when had she cared so much?
"I'm sorry," Leshwi muttered to Anxiety. "I know I should be out there helping the humans. I know that they're dumb and not used to this planet and they can't cope with highstorms. I know that; I've heard it in enough lectures. Sorry," she added. "I just-"
Storms, that day seemed so long ago now. It had been a long time since she had helped anyone, truly. These days, she just watched over battlefields.
“We are of Odium,” said Raboniel. “Not Honor. We aren’t upheld by a code that denies collateral. We live by Passions, and mine exists only to win this war.”
No, no. That wasn't right, that wasn’t Raboniel speaking. Leshwi refused. “What’s the point of winning this war if there’s no one left to ascribe the victory to?” Leshwi demanded. “We target the humans.”
“We are targeting the humans.”
“To what end? These are our people too. This is our storming planet, gemheart. We’re going to have nothing of it left when you’re done.”
Raboniel paused. “You have Passion,” she said to Derision. “Too much of it for the wrong cause. He trusted you, but you never grew out of your childish wish to become a Radiant.”
Destruction attuned itself in Leshwi’s mind and she suddenly stood up straighter, sucking in Voidlight in her anger. “Really?” she asked. “All this time, and that’s what you think? That I don’t care, that I’m a traitor, that I’m a storming child?” She could have laughed. “No, gemheart, that’s you. Always searching for an end, unable to consider the fact that we’re never going to get it. That there’s no end as long as Honor survives. And even if we do, that doesn’t make a happy ending. You know that, right? All we have that lies in front of us is eternity and destruction, all because you were stupid enough to assign yourself as the architect of this war.”
Leshwi breathed out slowly, though the Rhythm barely calmed in her mind for it. So long, and yet she was still so damned stupid. Both of them were, for Storm’s sake. It made sense, in a sort-of twisted way; neither of them had been made for anything other than war.
Raboniel just sat there like a confused cremling searching for a rock to scuttle under, frightened by a passing highstorm. Their Rhythms matched each other, a more violent version of Longing, though Raboniel hummed much more quietly. “We have to believe he’s going to let all of us die at some point. Otherwise there’s nothing to stop us from going insane. With no hope to hold onto, we’re more lost than we were ever.”
“Do you think the singers that you’re killing still have hope to hold onto after what you’ve done to them? Do you think they wish for death as we do, or do you think they all wish to continue living happy mortal lives down there? You can’t ruin an entire race for your own benefit.”
Leshwi lashed herself back down onto the floor and approached Raboniel’s desk, where she still sat, posture as perfect as always. Little phased Leshwi’s wife. She clasped Raboniel's hand in her own—a particularly human gesture, but Leshwi had always been strangely fond of those. "You really think he's going to let us die?" she asked, genuine. “When he’s done with this planet, do you think he’s going to cast us off to live a brief painless mortal life, and then move onwards to the Beyond? Gemheart, this isn’t going to end. You can’t break every singer on Roshar down to desperation for a false goal.”
Raboniel closed her eyes, and then attuned Fury. Leshwi fought the urge to pull back from the closeness the two femalens had curated here. “Essu is going insane,” Raboniel murmured. “I can’t do anything more than try. For her.”
“Gemheart-,” Leshwi started to Withdrawal.
“Please leave.” That was said to Fury too, harsh beats of an ever-loud Rhythm in their minds. How Leshwi wished to attune Reconciliation, to make this better for both of them, but that Rhythm remained just out of reach as it always did now. “Please leave,” Raboniel repeated. “Go.”
Leshwi hummed to Withdrawal, and Lashed herself back upwards into the air and out of the room, leaving those two tunes of Fury to play in their minds. It was hard to focus on the cold air or the wind that brushed her face now, no matter how much she craved it between Desolations; whatever Leshwi had just started, she thought it wasn't going to die out quietly.
No. This Passion would last as long as Raboniel did.
today.
“It’s been a long time,” Leshwi said, though she didn’t approach her once-mate. “At times, I had wondered if you’d still be here when I got back.”
“I had assumed you wouldn’t be,” Raboniel responded to Conceit. “You’re still sane. Probably saner than I am.” She paused, humming, and turned around to face her. Leshwi immediately looked down, as she’d been long taught to do towards her few superiors. “How do you live without that hope?” she asked.
Leshwi frowned.
“I mean,” Raboniel continued. “You don’t believe in this war. You don’t believe that we’re going to win it. I think,” she trailed off. “I don’t either anymore. I lost Essu. I’m losing everyone else, and there are only going to be more Desolations. The humans aren’t primitive anymore; they have the technology, the ideas to beat us back, again and again. But you’ve always believed that we always will keep losing. I don’t understand how you’re still sane.”
“I’m not without hope,” Leshwi said. “I just have a different type of it, waiting on some other victory.”
If she was going to become a Windrunner, one of Honor's favoured soldiers, she would have to be better, faster, stronger, unafraid.
You never grew out of your childish wish to become a Radiant.
“Child of Honor,” Raboniel said to Exultation, only half-accusatory. Leshwi matched Raboniel’s rhythm in confirmation.
“He was always our God. It shouldn’t be so hard to hold out onto hope.”
“If he wins, Odium dies.”
“Exactly.”
Neither of them spoke for a long minute, but Leshwi could tell that Raboniel was digesting that traitorous confession, deciding what to do with it; she didn’t truly know what the worst outcome could be. But when her once-mate spoke again, she was surprised by the genuine emotion in her words.
“Good luck,” Raboniel whispered to Command. “I am… looking too. For an ending. Maybe one of us will find it eventually.”
Leshwi hummed and turned away, observing the strata of the human stronghold as if it could force her to linger, to draw out what would probably be her final goodbye to her once-mate. But Raboniel didn’t say anything else, and Leshwi didn’t argue. Her thoughts raced against her as she strode down the corridor into the communal areas of Urithiru, her decision made.
She wasn't going to face being on the wrong side of this war any longer.