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asher vignette

blargtheawesome

... is very scientifical.
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vignette 2: electric boogaloo

Gelyk and Marie Varyn moved along the docks of Linistel, walking ahead of their son, Asher Varyn. The day was bright and beautiful, and even this far south where there was a desert, the smell of flowers and the sea carried on the wind from terraces and the nearby ocean respectively. It was hot, swelteringly hot, but they weren’t going to be here for much longer.

They had already bought their tickets, and it was going to be Asher’s first time sailing on his own. His parents’ boat had too many passengers already. Asher was excited, albeit in that nervous boyish way that he hid from his parents, so his father would be proud of him for his stoicism. His mother was not stoic, but she wasn’t from the north, either. She was bubbly, laughing, even as she had been upset and worried minutes before. Something his father had said to her, Asher thought.

How he wished he was that charismatic to make people laugh. But that was okay, too. His parents and Asher stood at a crossroads beside one another, and they both turned to him and his mother went forward to hug him. Asher was already taller than her, but that wasn’t much to be proud of. She held his arms and beamed at him, and spoke quickly.
“When you get to Queensport, buy yourself a room and just wait for us there. We shouldn’t be more than a day or two, and if you get hungry buy a room. And if you need a doctor or anything the apothecary is there too. Don’t get lost, okay? And don’t go outside the city. And-”
“Marie, come on now.” Gelyk, Asher’s father, sounded amused.
Marie looked over her shoulder at him, and she seemed embarrassed for a moment, before looking back to Asher and squeezing him again and stepping back. Gelyk then reached over, and clapped Asher on the shoulder.
“See you soon, boy. Now go catch your boat before it’s off, and don’t lose your ticket.”
Asher smiled at his parents, and hugged his father. His father returned it warmly. Then he hugged his mother. Then he went off to the ship, parting reluctantly, but parting. He was entirely confident in his parents’ promise that they would come get him after but a day or two had passed. He knew. He knew it so certainly, with such absolute confidence.

They were coming.​
They were.​
Even if the ocean were to swallow them whole.​
Even if their ship were attacked by pirates.​
Even if their captain became lost.​
Even if he had to wait just a little while.​
Even if he were waiting for about a day.​
Waiting two would be fine.​
Even three was alright.​
Four years.​
Asher saw before him the image of a great underwater kingdom, where the people there were lewd and had fins for feet, and they wielded tridents and their lips were all blue. There was a great palace here underwater, made up of a thousand broken hulls and a million souls lost to sea, but even here there was a graveyard, and even appealing with all he could to the whale-king, he spoke to Asher in a voice that was both the deepest and strangest he had ever heard.
“No, Asher. Even here, they are dead. They are not returning. An empty grave will not have them rouse. Why did you leave them to me? Maybe if you found them like you found Richard, they’ll come back like Richard did.”

It was only then that he finally awoke, with a soft gasp at his surreal dream. It was pitch black when he woke up, and sleeping next to him was Katherine. He did not shoot out of bed, and thank God for that so he would not have to explain his dream to her. Asher just lay there in bed for a minute, listening to his fiance’s breathing, shivering slightly from a cold sweat which had swept over him.

Asher began to slowly rise from the bed, careful not to rouse Katherine in doing so. He put on a robe, and began to leave the one bedroom which made up a gigantic suite that was only a single tower of the vast castle, one wing of which was larger than the entire village he held dominion over. He stopped short with a flinch, glancing back to the bed, and remembering he had forgotten something. Asher cursed himself under his breath, for forgetting his duty, for being imperfect, for being fool enough to not remember.
He walked back over to the bed, and he picked up Dawnbreak, sheathed in a scabbard black enough to match the hilt wrapped in its own dark leather. It gave him no comfort to hold it, and in this moment of having forgotten it, it gave him no pride, either. He carried it with him as he left the bedroom. He felt terrible guilt for having forgotten the sword, irrationally: the sword was not a mere thing of wood, leather, and steel to Asher, it was the physical representation of his house. Of the duty he had wrested from his cousin, and leaving it behind even for a moment had reopened the sore memories of that dreadful day.

He closed the door to the bedroom behind himself, and throwing a log on the fire, collapsed in a sitting position on the couch. It was not as dark in here, the curtains open to let moonlight shine in through the incredibly clear glass that could be afforded here. He leaned the sword beside himself, and he put his head in his hands, closing his eyes hard as he tried to clear his mind. The moonlight never quite reached him, but he was bathed in the artificial light of the fire he had made.
The dream had roused deep feelings of guilt within him, as it always did, and like all of Asher’s dreams it was incredibly visceral and clear. He could still almost taste the salt on the air and the heady scent of flowers clung to him like the grogginess from sleep. Not quite able to will himself to wake up in full, he leaned back on the couch, and looked up at the ceiling.

His thoughts went to his house, and how pathetic it was he was not at Oren, the seat of his power, now. He thought about how Richard had criticized him for it, and in his memory it was harsher than it ever could have been in reality. That he felt so terrible for it he rose from the couch in a moment of anger, and he thought harshly to himself, I’m too sensitive! By fuck, this is why I killed James! I’m weak and a fool!

Asher paced the room, his hands curled around the belt of his robe, tensing, wanting so badly to have something, anything, to take his anger out on. He thought of the tranquility he felt in battle, of the calm slowness that came in the moments during a real spat, and how he always knew what to do then. It brought on repressed, unspoken thoughts of his cousin, and Asher felt so deeply frustrated by his inability to control his own thoughts that he felt he could almost cry.
He didn’t. It wasn’t his place to. Asher wasn’t a man for tears, he kept telling himself. He was the man who could do it all. He could take his house, and he could raise it to the stars. He could take an army, and rush it off to war. He could take any foe. He could overcome any odds. He could make Varyn great again. He could make a better world for his children. He wouldn’t be the one who murdered his cousin only to let his house decline and fade into history. He wouldn’t be. His children wouldn’t be refugees or mercenaries, his children would be kings. King-nephew, he thought with a sudden rush of morbid recollection.

The door to the bedroom opened again, and Asher looked over, briefly startled. It was Katherine.
She spoke first. “You weren’t in bed.”
Asher turned to her, and approached, kissing her forehead before speaking. “I had to go to the privy.”
Katherine sounded amused briefly, before moving past. “Likewise.”
Asher went back to bed, forgetting the sword again for tonight.
 
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