Fanfic:Edwyn's Three Arches
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First Arch
Edwyn tried to ignore his thin body's nakedness. It had been a long time since anyone had seen this side of him - a physical manifestation of an openness that seared into his consciousness uncomfortably. But he had come so far. Edwyn had suffered through much worse in his time . . . he would bear through it and become enlightened.
The scholar walked through the arch and was enveloped by its light . . .
"Edwyn?" a voice quavered, "Edwyn, what is happening? Edwyn?" Edwyn was trying to push through the crowd of astonished people, flames heating his back as he dragged Vaeric to a place of safety. Vaeric. His brother. His poor, sick brother. They both looked very much alike, especially as they watched their bookstore burn to the ground, their pale faces tinged with crimson and soot.
His heart ached as he saw his brother. Once, his eyes had shone with a keen intelligence and ambition. Now they were frought with hopelessness and delusion as he babbled maniacally. It was not merely appearances that they shared. It was also another trait . . . the One Power.
The taint was consuming Vaeric. Even as Edwyn tried to get him away from the panicking villagers, he knew that half the danger was Vaeric losing control of the Power and causing some significant harm. As if anymore harm were possible. Edwyn dreaded the inevitability that he would fall to the same fate. Vaeric had managed to control the symptoms for quite some time . . . but the madness and delusions became worse . . . it took all of Edwyn's strength at times to keep him from going into a murderous berserker rage . . .
He watched his brother physically and mentally deteriorate, feeling his own heart do the same. For the longest time, the bookstore he and Vaeric lived and invested in had been their bastion . . . Vaeric's refuge and Edwyn's sanctum . . . and now it was burning to the ground.
"Come, Vaeric," he soothed his brother, wondering if his eyes were watering because of the smoke, "We have to go now. Come on." They ran, Edwyn half-dragging him along. Agony was mixed with fury and fear. Who had burned their store down? Why do such a thing to them? Why now?
Just as they were running, five women in brown dresses surrounded them. It did not take Edwyn long to realize that they had ageless faces. He knew who they were. Now all of what happened made sense. "Please," he said, "You must help me. My brother is hurt, you must ---"
Suddenly, Edwyn felt a blow upside his skull and he fell. "Edwyn!" The last thing Edwyn felt was his brother's saidin being cut off abruptly, the darkness taking him . . .
He awoke and found himself tied by invisible bonds in a far off campsite in the Black Hills. Air.
They had been tormenting him for a long time. The Red sisters had set him up, sending a representative to say that they had a cure for the taint . . . she tricked him. Even the red welts on his mutilated body were not as painful as that.
Edwyn tried to seize saidin as he saw the Aes Sedai surrounding his brother, but his connection to it had been blocked. He tried to shout, but his mouth had also been bound. Edwyn could only listen to his brother's half-mad screams as thirteen Red shawled Aes Sedai lashed him - over and over again with slices of Air.
Edwyn tried to break free, watching his brother limply flail about, blood staining the ground. He screamed in maddened agony. "This will teach him a lesson," one of the sisters smirked. After a while, Vaeric was still. The sisters seemed to relax somewhat and were about to raise their hands. Edwyn's blood ran cold, only reading about this, and yet knowing what they were about to do.
They were going to gentle him.
Suddenly, three of the Red sisters shouted and were blown away by a blast of Fire. Vaeric took advantage of the Reds' momentary lapse and ran toward Edwyn.
Just as quickly, Vaeric's face drained of colour, "Edwyn . . ." he moaned, "I can feel it, but it isn't there . . . I can feel it . . ."
The Reds grabbed Vaeric's trembling form and Edwyn felt white hot rage and pain build . . . until they tore him to shreds with their whips of Air.
"Vaeric!" Edwyn screamed, not even realizing that he was free. Three sisters ran toward him and with a fury that he had never thought possible within him, he unleashed the Power on them, burning them alive . . .
Edwyn ran . . . his body badly slashed by the Reds, running . . . He would survive. Somehow, he would survive . . . and kill them. He would kill the survivors . . .
And so he did.
Edwyn found himself back in the room with the other Asha'man. The whole ordeal had been surreal. He did not know why his pale body was not trembling, but it should have. It should have.
But he would survive. He had to. For Vaeric.
Second Arch
The freshened pain of seeing his brother again only to lose him, Edwyn ignored the pounding in his temples and straightened his back. Edwyn walked slowly to the second Arch and felt his pain strip itself away . . . to leave blackness in its wake . . .
The apparition waited for him, as it always had done. Edwyn stood within the grey landscape, every detail, line, curve and shape lustreless and dark . . .
There was only one element of colour in these dying hills. Red. The apparition wore robes, its visage hidden by blood-red cloth, its cloak woven from old and tattered crimson fabric.
It beckoned him with a gaunt finger . . . soaked in a reddish liquid. Edwyn tried to resist it, to run . . . but it was no use. He felt the landscape widen and thicken as he found himself moving toward the figure.
He faced it now, the tattered red wraith. It stood silently and unmoving for the longest time. There was something about it . . . something . . . wrong . . . both blood and oily darkness on its hands. Then they came. The shadows of words . . . the half-formed ideas . . . they surrounded him . . . and to his horror they started gaining substance . . . gradually until . . .
"Al'Mera'din'Cal'Mordero, mesain ye," a sibilant croak surrounded the scholar like blood-soaked raven's wings, enveloping him in soundless terror and yearning . . .
The figure's tattered cloak wrapped around him . . . Edwyn could not even struggle as it held him and pressed its body closer . . . against him. With both its hands, it unfastened its cowl, removing it . . .
Edwyn saw a blood-soaked visage, gazing at him with madness and avarice . . . and familiarity? Then he saw the face behind the blood . . . and the truth seared into his soul. "You have paid the price of blood, now we are brothers. The Brotherless will be One again."
He screamed as the truth of his blood, of his being rushed into him, the being's fingers sinking into his chest, into his heart . . . the admitance devestating . . .
Third Arch
Edwyn's mind is blank, trying to recover from the horror that he faced. His skin is pale, very, very white . . . It had been awful . . . his present? But . . . it could not matter now. It was almost over. One more Test. One more . . .
Edwyn caught himself before he could stagger. He breathed for a few moments . . . vaguely wondering why there was no sweat beading on his form, stepping through . . .
He was reborn. No more was he vulnerable, no longer did he have to rely on others, or hide behind the relics of the past to deny the present. Most of all, he was no longer afraid of what lay in his mind.
Others were though. As all would be in time.
He walked past his victims, their minds forever trapped and tormented in the illusions that he wove for them . . . Tel'aran'rhiod was much like a spider's web in that sense . . . much like the legends of Moghedien herself.
The Great Lord had made him strong. He could feel the Dark One's power as he had been granted his presence, the omniscent Being's slightest touch creating more pleasure in the mind than most human flesh could never hop to emulate in the body . . .
Garbed in darkness, he was free of the Light's hypocrisy . . . no longer to be hunted or patronized or manipulated . . . Now he was the manipulator, the shadow master . . . he would be Dreadlord, perhaps even Chosen. No one would stand in his way.
He blithely wandered over the great web strands, sensing the delicious screams of agony and madness he had nurtured in those who opposed him, who mocked him . . .
But the best was yet to come. He was suspended in front of him, his newest victim . . . His newest victim and his oldest nemesis. They shared many things together . . . passion of lore, love of discovery and humour and wit. Both of them had lived side by side, sharing food and sustenance, growing up on the same love and pain and loss and gain . . . Both of them shared the same Power, the same face . . .
"Hello," he told the black-haired, pale skinned man he had known since the day they had been born side by side, "How ironic, isn't it? You see our lives, I make you see them. Everything sensation, image, and sound increased ten-times their former clarity."
Laughing harshly and with genuinely venomous amusement, he said, "I am glad that you survived, you know. All we have gone through together. You always kept me back. You know that don't you? We hid from the Aes Sedai and the common ones . . . like rats . . . we should have ruled them, made them quail with fear . . . You betrayed me, letting that Sister know who we were, luring the Reds to us . .. how very foolish and short-sighted of you."
He paced around the figure, "We were both born together you and I. We were destined to learn together, to be damned together . . . it is only a pity . . . that we will not die together, is it not . . . brother?"
The other tried to beg, to plead, but he wove a complex weave based on memory and heightened it with Spirit and Fire for good measure. He laughed maniacally as he watched his brother die . . . a victim of his own mind . . . only this time he would be consumed by it forever . . . perfect vengeance . . .
But unlike his other victims, he would give him the fraternal honour of being with him in his last hours . . . to be born together . . . to die seperately . . .
Crazed laughter filled the darkness, interming with the screams of his brother . . .
Edwyn stepped out of his final Test, pale and shaking . . . he fell to his knees and did not move. He had done it. He had gone through all three Arches. The truth was his along with his Dedicated pin . . . He would smoulder in that truth . . . for a long time . . .
