POV: eshonai
Summary
A YEAR AND A HALF AGO. A banging on the door pulls Eshonai from her mother's chair into a tempest; she opens it onto Venli — drenched, wide-eyed, grinning — clutching a gemstone the size of a third of her fist. Jaxlim chides her elder daughter for tracking in water, locked into one of her episodes where she sees them as children. Venli walks past without hearing, cradling the stone.
The gem is barely glowing. Eshonai has to lean close to see it at all. It worked, Venli whispers to Awe — the secret is lightning. When she got close enough right after a strike she saw hundreds of the little spren, and snagged one before the rest slipped back to the other side. *Stormform*, Venli says. *Power.* Dangerous power, Eshonai answers — it could destroy the listeners. Venli answers that the listeners are already being destroyed, and surely this time they should try a different solution than the snap decision their ancestors made thousands of years ago. Thunder rolls outside as if to agree. Eshonai hands the stone back and hums Betrayal — a rhythm that does not do justice to how deeply the words cut.
She walks out into the storm. The wind hits her, but in warform's armor she barely feels the icy rain. She crosses the city, gets her bearings by lightning flash, and stops at the edge of one of the central plateau's chasms, into the wind. *What do you want from us?* she shouts into the dark. *Answer me, Rider! Spren of the storm! You're a traitor like us, aren't you? Is that why you sent Venli those little spren?* The wind blasts her, lightning freezes the spinning debris around her in the air, thunder rattles her carapace. No reply. *What kind of choice is this? Either we let the humans destroy us, or we turn away from the one thing that defines us — the one value that matters?* She knows already that they will have to take Venli's discovery to the Five, that the elders cannot reject the possibility of a new form now. *Everything I've done has been to ensure we remain our own people. I gave up my dreams. But I will not give up our minds.*
She turns to go and hears it — rock scraping on rock, loud enough to carry over the tempest. She steps back. A branching flash of lightning silhouettes an enormous shape in front of her, claws as thick as her body curled over the rim of the chasm. A second flash shows its head turned to one side, a chasmfiend snout with jagged-sword teeth, watching her. Eshonai does not run. If it wanted her, she is already dead; and the beasts are known to play with anything that acts like prey. She stands in the dark, not daring to attune a rhythm, and when the next flash comes the great head has lowered until its eye is close enough she could touch it with a thrust.
Then a small light flares into being directly in front of her — a tiny spren made of white fire, trailing afterimages as it moves, like a falling star. It zips forward and circles her, and by its glow she watches the chasmfiend slowly retreat into the chasm, its claws scoring the stone. Heart beating like the storm, Eshonai attunes Anxiety and hurries home. The little spren follows her.