Parts IV-IX of Romantasy/Romance Fantasy

IV Daybreak

“It is a fortunate thing for the rest of us, that deathwish of yours.” Breyam muses, wiping his axe with his glovecloth next to Vinna.

She stares at the faces of Wittol and Mork, having been turned up from their facedown position. The Mennelra had been, all the time they had been waiting for them to resurface, finishing what must have been a clearly multi-year process of weakening the highest gate by deepening a fissure they had furrowed into the exterior tunnel.

It was Wittol that had rung the alarm, or partly, as he had been struck from behind before giving it the full yank. That was the weak signal Vinna had caught. He had left Mork to fend their ambushers off, though he was definitely the broader of the two. He was a frustrating bastard like that, likely due to being a village head’s son. And Mork, idealist that he was, was an underfed farmer’s son at the end of the day. He could barely read the Code when he first came to Gríðr. Now, here they were, made equal by death. She thought of how their villages would wail for them, once they had gotten their bodies.

“You’re not wise to go down that way, Keeper Vinna.” Breyam had stayed behind after the battle had reached its bloody conclusion to ensure she stopped. Just stopped. She always still had the wildness inside her after battle. She had scratched herself bloody or maimed herself in other ways, to feel pain, other times. She had taken to knocking herself out to force sleep, but Breyam had reprimanded her when he had found out, some years back, threatening to send her home, which he had known would make her listen.

Vinna doesn’t respond. The next round of watchers comes, taking more bodies to be buried, eventually hauling Wittol and Mork too, away from her sight.

.

Breyam keeps Vinna on her trajectory up the stairs. The burly man, once a tall and smiling boy, had started as a watcher around the same time as Vinna, and knows Vinna’s mind well, her tendency to fix on one thing and not let it go, even when she wants to. Reaching her door, he turns, “I took the liberty of asking around for some ‘help’ for you.”