"Commander of Death" Part I: A Meeting of Souls
POV: CEERA
TL;DR - The end of Ceera's story - or perhaps the beginning of a new chapter. (We'll see if I feel like continuing it.)
A Meeting of Souls
Ceera is not in Pact Command on Dragonfall, like she is technically supposed to be. She is in the Mist Warden camp. She’d already led several expeditions to recover mist essence and even managed to revive a few fallen soldiers. No point in adding to the ghosts populating the camp.
Once, upon return, she’d come face-to-face with the Pact Commander, who had seen her frigid stare and turned away without a word.
Now she marches in to the camp, orders a wounded Vigil recruit into a makeshift bed in a tent, and is overseeing the distribution of mist essence, when she hears her name.
“Ceera? Are you Ceera?”
The voice comes from high above her. Ceera turns and looks upward to a norn. “Yes, I am.”
“Someone’s looking for you. Ah - a ghost.”
A terrible, motionless agony seizes Ceera. She can’t speak. She hardly dares to connect the dots. Finally she manages to rasp out, “where?”
She follows the norn through the camp as if only her steps and the path to her destination are real. Everything else is frozen, irrelevant - she’s walking through another world.
And then she sees him.
Tonn.
Her husband.
Her love and her life.
She flies into his arms, but he is incorporeal; but she holds his hands and tears fall down her face and he is speaking to her gently, softly, repeating words she hadn’t heard for eight years.
“Tonn,” she murmurs, just to hear his name on her lips again. “Tonn.”
“My Ceera,” he replies, and she hadn’t heard him say her name in so long, even the slight distortion of his voice is irrelevant - he is here. He is speaking to her. “I found you.”
Ceera closes her eyes and just revels in the sound of his voice. “Yes,” she murmurs.
“I won’t ever leave you again,” he promises.
“Can you?” she asks wonderingly, opening her eyes to look into his face. “Don’t you have to go back - after?”
“Not if I don’t want to,” he smiles at her. “Now, tell me what you’ve been up to. News of big things comes in to the Mists now and then, but I’ve only ever heard bits and pieces about you.”
So she tells him. The mist essence distribution can handle itself for a few hours. Or days...
~oOoOo~
Next (Pt 2)