Berkut was silent again. His eyes darted away from Pent’s, not quite toward the ground, but some place just below the sage’s challenging gaze. Not out of shame, but to hide the emotion he could no longer mask as it crossed his features in sporadic bursts.
“I did not give up my own body,” he answered, quiet yet defensive, and then he hesitated. The truth was selfish, and he was not even sure that he could speak it out loud, hear it from his own lips. In Valentia, those who knew of the battle at Duma’s altar knew what he had done as well. They judged him without need of explanation, and in some ways, that was better. He could remain indignant that they judged him unfairly; he could protect himself from hearing the truth.
But what the sage offered him was non-judgement. A sharp, discerning eye, certainly, but Pent had not rebuked him for anything yet, and even allowed the topic to depart. Berkut looked down at his hand. Ambient magic. Duma’s magic. And he could do nothing with it, except watch a few ancient symbols pulse weakly at his touch. Berkut curled his fingers into a fist and dropped his hand to his side.
“My country was at war until recently,” he returned to the topic on his own, choosing his words carefully in the long pauses. “When the enemy invaded our land, and when His Majesty eventually fell, I sought out our patron deity for strength. I saw no other option. Rigel would fall. I could not sit idly by and let that happen.
“In exchange for his power, Duma took my fiancee… but even that was not enough. … I failed. Duma was slain, and his departure from our land took the power he had given me with him.”
As he spoke, his voice grew harder, rougher, and he bit back on the tremble that threatened to undermine his words.
“I have nothing now. No throne. No country. No power.“ Louder, angrier. “Rinea will never come back. Nothing will return to what it once was. But I was left with this―“ He pulled off the glove of his right hand and thrust it between himself and Pent, skin noticeably dark and discolored, as if rotting, even in the dim light. “–to remind me of what a fool I had been to beg the gods for help.”
Even after death, the gods still taunted him, bestowing untouchable, uncontrollable power on an ugly mark for the world to see. Berkut fell silent again, staring distantly at his hand for some time, so long that one would think him finished. But then he spoke again, harking back to a question Pent had asked earlier in their excursion:
“I came to Elibe for guidance…”
It had all sounded relatively reasonable until he said it. Pent’s brows shot up behind the silver of his hair as he stared in some degree of shock. He did what, now? The admission continued to rattle in his head as the man went on with his story. He listened. He really did, but at times, he felt as if his mind had ceased to register the actual words of Berkut’s tale, and simply the angry indignation at being cheated by...
“You had not paid a price; you took a gamble,” he corrected, shaking off the dismay, then able to look at Berkut with more clarity. He still couldn’t quite process what he had been told. “And it turned out poor investment.”
There must have been marriages of convenience there in Berkut’s homeland then. Unions between people so incompatible that the other was disposable, not at all unlike that between Desmond and Hellene. His engagement must have been just such an arrangement; otherwise, how could one possibly--
Pent sighed, dragging one hand down his face... and his rings glinted in the low light. He thought over his words more carefully.
“You have to understand two things,” he began, collecting himself once more. The sage touched one hand to his chest, fingers settling just below the clasp of his cloak in self-gesture. “First, I am a married man. To a woman of my own choice, and who had embraced me in the same regard. I do not claim to understand your circumstance nor your relationship with this woman, nor can I fathom your rationale.” And he supposed that wasn’t a bad thing. For him.
“Second, the Other powers--gods or otherwise, as they may be--do nothing in half-measure.” You got what you paid for. The price for actual power was often much steeper than the life of another. And the fall out... Well. That was of one’s own making.
“You did not need to come to Elibe for guidance; it sounds to me as if you are aware enough of the implications and nuances of what occurred. But.” Pent levelled him a more neutral look. One of casual expectation. Not accusatory, but purely indicative. “You know, but you have not accepted. And so you ran. The truth is not going to morph into something more palatable just be being elsewhere. You cannot escape that.”
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