Autumn Rain

I first met Rain when I was six and she was eight. The first thing that stands out most from that encounter was her hair - in contrast to her blue eyes, it was red, hinted with orange, like the fire aspect of her family.

Her first words to me were, "You're so small and thin! Have you ever been mistaken for a girl?"

"Beats the hell out of me. Have you?"

Naturally, we fought. I was young and didn't know better. She was older and just as scrappy as me. We ended up rolling around in the courtyard for an hour, and eventually, tired out, we lay beside each other, panting, bruised, and scuffled, heedless to the scoldings we'd get from our parents when they saw our torn clothes.

I turned to her, and found that she was already looking at me. And that's the second thing I'll remember from that afternoon - the feeling of wanting to lie there forever, with Rain by my side.

After that, we were friends of a kind. Some of her friends teased her for hanging out with boys. We sneaked slugs into their bedclothes and laughed our heads off when we heard the screams. When I brought her around to the guys, they laughed at us too, until we beat the stupid out of them. Our parents noticed how well we were getting along, and figured it wouldn't hurt to put us in the same school. Before my growth spurt, she was the muscle and I was the mouth. After that, she became the brains and I became the brawn. Together, we were invincible, or at least we thought we were, and only the Exalted kids our age would mess with us. But most of the time we'd be running all over the place, sparring with weapons, exploring parts of the family Manses and getting into trouble... together.

Then I Exalted, and everything changed.

I had few signs of strong breeding, so my change - and at such a young age - came as a complete surprise, most of all to Rain. Her markings of lineage were much more pronounced than mine, and we'd both accepted that she would probably Exalt before me. I secretly dreaded that day, when she would have to leave me behind for a world I would not be part of.

And now I found myself in her place.

I swore that I would never leave her, because even then, at eleven, I knew I wanted to spend my life with her. I loved her with all the reckless intensity of youth and a son of Hesiesh, so much that I could think of nothing else. In many ways, she was the flame, and I was the moth drawn to its hypnotic light.

But Fate is a cruel bitch. Almost immediately, I was taken out of her school and into some snotty Exalt-only prep school. I was also belabored with extra classes, most of which were stupid, boring academic work. I'd try to meet Rain secretly, on weekends, holidays, on faked medical absences, but she was busy too. Her parents, seeing my blazing example, were placing a lot of pressure on their daughter to follow suit. We didn't have a lot of time for ourselves, but I treasured every moment we had together. My single hope was that she was apparently slated to go into the House of Bells with me, and that, and only that, inclined me towards meeting the basic academic requirements to get in.

Then, the day the results for admission came out, she dropped an Essence bomb. Her younger brother, Niman, had Exalted, and her parents had taken the slot meant for her and given it to him. She would be going across the Inland Sea, to serve as a caretaker for the Northern properties of the House, effective tomorrow. We both knew what this meant. There was no question about my admission to the House; she'd helped me with my studies and she was ten times the tactician I was. But the timetable at the House was so demanding - and the security so tight - that I'd have a devil of a time sneaking out to the local brothel, much less across the bloody ocean. We'd built our hopes and dreams around being able to be together and now they were falling apart.

Rain was crying as she told me this, and when I took her into my arms, there was no question about what would happen next. We'd been planning to save our first times for that night, when we found out about our future together. Instead, it became a farewell present, and I have never wanted - and hated - a night with a woman that much in my life.

It was my turn to shed a tear when I watched her leave on the boat. I was strong, of course. Her parents were watching, and so was mine. But as her ship vanished over the horizon, I turned to mask the single drop in the corner of my eye.

And then her brother Niman did the stupidest thing in his life. He came up to me, while I was trying my hardest to rein in my emotions, and he slapped me on the back and spewed some inane, mindless crap about how we'd be buddies in the House of Bells.

I almost killed him on the spot. I had my armor on. I had knives in wrist sheathes. I had just watched my first and only love go across the sea, and heard the stupid, worthless substitute for her try and chum up to me.

And then I had the worthless maggot by the throat.

He struggled, but his resistance was futile. I would have gutted him like a fish if it hadn't been for Alina. We'd never really gotten along, especially since she was one of the girls Rain and I had pranked when we were younger. But she could read me like an open book, and the sentence she was on would eventually lead to Niman becoming a dead, insensitive son of a bitch. I dropped him like the sack of shit he was and he scurried, I swear, he scurried away like a wharf rat. He shot me a look of spiteful anger, but one look into my eyes and he resumed his scrabbling.

I was disciplined, of course. Got the crap beaten out of me by Father, and he sent orders ahead to the House to have me effectively grounded for a month, and I was made to further my martial studies during that time. But it was fine. I needed the time alone, anyway. It's amazing how well you can focus once the core of your life's been torn away and you're searching for something to fill it with.

Time passed. Eventually, I got over it. Threw myself into fighting and studying the military sciences, and eventually acquitted myself honorably. I wasn't the top man there, but I was pretty damn close, and everyone knew it. Went into the legions (of course), and though I tried my best to get some time off to visit Rain, I was too busy with stupid posturing and training exercises and meet-and-greets with prospective wives, most of whom were ugly as sin and twice as stupid.

We'd been exhanging correspondence ever since she got settled in her new place, mostly purple prose and long discourses about life where we were. But the recent troubles in the North had her worried, and her most recent one talked about trouble in the outlier regions of the lands in her region.

Then the letters stopped coming.

Fortunately, we were deployed to the North, but as part of a military unit, there was no way in hell I could get to her, however much I wanted to. My mob, the Nasty Gentlemen, was a veteran dragon, and we were always on stand-by as a fast response force. The anxiety I felt in the first month separated from Rain came back full force, and it got so bad even my men (may they come back as Exalts, every last one of them) noticed the change. Then my adjutant suggested a plan, and I couldn't believe how stupid I was.

It was simple, really. All I had to do was convince the legion commander to let me and mine investigate Rain's chateau. It wasn't even very far from our deployment location - we were barely a day's march away from the place. Fortunately, she was sympathetic, and let me carry out my plan. I set out with 500 men in tow, and eventually we reached the place.

It looked beat-up as hell, and the signs of a recent invasion were evident. There were lots of her family's soldiers camped all over the place, with wooden palisades and stake trenches dug around the Manse.

And there, directing the defenses, was Rain. The years had only made her more beautiful, and I literally jumped off my horse and ran to her. I caught the look on her face - surprise, turning rapidly to joy, and saw a hint of beautiful sadness behind it, but I put it out of mind as we embraced for the first time in years. My men, those bastards, started whooping and calling out encouragement, at least until I told them to shut up and reinforce the garrison.

As for Rain and myself, we retired t oher quarters and... made up for lost time. The funny thing was that she kept sidestepping the question about Anathema trouble. The response was invariably "It's over," or "There's nothing you can do," and while I found it odd, I wasn't about to quibble.

Not when she was with me.

The next morning, she woke me with a kiss and bade me leave. I asked her why, and she said that the Anathema were coming. Naturally, I refused. What kind of man, let alone lover, would I be if I left her to the wolves? At that point I probably wouldn't have gone back even if Tepet Arada had personally come down and ordered me to, on pain of death. She simply shook her head, and asked me again, but before I could say no a second time, a messenger came for me with news that the scouts had spotted Anathema troops forward of our position.

I turned to Rain, told her to organize her defense, then ran back to where my men were encamped outside her fortress. As I neared our lines, half of them, the ones who weren't manning the line against the Anathema,turned to me with a funny look on their faces. I was about to bark orders again when I suddenly realised that it wasn't me that they were looking at.

They were looking behind us, at Rain's forces. On the palisades, men with crossbows wound the winches back and took aim. The rolled up flagpoles were loosed, and on them was a blade, framed by a golden sunburst.

The very same one which blazed upon Rain's brow.

As she took up a long golden daiklave, I saw that beautiful sadness in her eyes again, from the day before.

Then her men fired in a massed volley, and over thirty men died from that first fusillade alone. There is a technical term for this kind of situation. It is called, "you are thoroughly screwed." We'd expected a heavy melee attack from the front, so we'd built forward fortifications of our own, and now we were being pelted by arrows in the back from a fortified position. Fire blazed on the sides of the palisades, and a wall of fire soon surrounded the camps. As my entrenched guys turned around to charge the palisade, carrying pieces of our fortifications as cover, a loud war whoop came from the forests to our front, and a horde of barbarians sprang from the treeline, biting their shields and foaming at the mouth.

My men died around me, and as their screams filled the air, I dashed forward to meet her in battle, still unable to believe that she was doing this, that I was doing this. Our blades clashed, and we went back and forth about a hundred times, smashing wooden logs carts, everyone and everything in reach. She was good, at least as good as me, and she was so strong and fast...

I didn't have the heart to fight her. I'd just spent one of the happiest nights of my life with her and now this? Confused, I was easy prey. I got four blows in for every three she did, but that damn golden blade moved so fast that my attacks were irrelevant. She broke my guard, numbed my arms with a strike that I barely parried, the force driving my feet through the snow and into the ground, and then she smashed into me with that massive golden razor of hers. The armor held - just barely - but she connected with enough force to shatter both my legs at the thigh. The rigid frame of my dragon armor kept me standing for a moment, but then I keeled over in front of her, the weapon falling from my hands. Face first in the cold, wet snow, I saw the glow of her anima banner approaching, and I prepared myself for death. Strangely enough, I felt no more fear. She was going to kill me. Rain, sweet Autumn Rain, my childhood sweetheart and now, a Forsaken, was going to kill me. But that was what they did, right? She was just doing what came naturally...

I was wrong.

She knelt, and I tried to look at her, but my arms were still numb from parrying a series of monstrously powerful blows, and all I could do was try and glimpse the light she radiated.

"Run away, Kashi," she said, using the nickname from our shared childhood which only she knew. "Run away, and never come back. Please... for your sake... don't come back."

Then her light left me, and the world went dark.

When I came to, Rain was gone, and her chateau was empty. All around me, my men were slaughtered, and signs of violence were still fresh on their bodies. Of my lieutenants, there was no sign.

Then I sat up, wincing from the wounds even my Snakeskin Gem couldn't heal, and I saw them, crucified on our own defenses. Of my daiklave and enemy bodies, there was no sign.

Fortunately, a group of scouts following our trail found me, and dragged me the fifty miles back to camp. I was out for three days, and I found out later that it wouldn't have mattered if I had stayed with the main force, anyway. The attack was swift and brutal, with multiple Solar Anathema supported by outcastes and barbarian warriors. One of the regiments was led by a woman who flew a banner of a sunburst and a blade...

On my way back to the Isle, I spent my time thinking about her. She's an Anathema now, possessed by an evil demon who stole her soul and made her its slave. But that night, when we were together, she seemed so... real. The monks tending me told me that that was the way of Anathema, to deceive and trick us, but below my mask of sincerity, I couldn't help but disagree. What I fought was an Anathema... but what spared my life was Rain.

I should hate her... but I cannot do anything but love her.

What do I do?

What the hell do I do?

---

Autumn Rain is a Dawn Caste Solar who specializes in Melee combat, with a minor focus on the mass-combat scale battlefield. She wields an orichalcum reaper daiklave, named "Dawn Breaks Swiftly." Her unit flies the Banner of the Flying Sword, which is a daiklave set in the middle of the Dawn Caste sunburst.