A Guardian's Ascension (Chapter 12) (Patreon)

Early in Raluch’s explanation, Sophia stopped hearing the foreign syntax of her superior’s voice, as if they’d melded minds, and so followed every meaning like an unblocked broadsword to the stomach, even grasping the kind but still-painful rationale of it all such that her preemptive fiery-hearted defense of Torv’s worth was quickly forgotten, and replaced instead with melancholic self-pity: a sensation that only frustrated her worse for its existence at all, though she didn’t so much as hint at it outwardly. Somehow, deep down, she’d known it would come to this, despite the loss of her soul partnership feeling agonizingly senseless even just as recently as her descent down the Citadel’s surrounding topography to the river’s edge.

“You mean that, to be a Guardian, I have no choice but to cast him out of my life? For… good?” Sophia begged, after muscling past this newest swell of distress. “Raluch, please. I do not understand. How can that be the way, when I only became a Guardian by vowing to care for and protect my people? All I have done here was out of love for them, all of them. But… my family, and Torv most of all, they-”

“Guardian Sophia must not say forever parting to Love Torv,” Raluch emphasized, clutching the other giantess’s hands between her own now and pressing them against her chest. “Yes. Guardian Sophia is accepting of duty, is chosen, of her love. For this she must find answering of her need, must find what feeds her to full, what is greatest for Guardian Sophia with Love Torv. Guardian Raluch is seeing of Guardian Sophia’s care for Love Torv, of its never ceasing. But Guardian Sophia is changed. All and greater beyond. Love Torv and all people of Guardian Sophia are believing already in strength of her. In knowledge of her. In ascension of her, to one of above them. Guardian Sophia is not having faith of herself, to be one of above them. But she must being of their faith. She must becoming of the glory they are giving of Guardian Sophia. This is combat apart of the blade and shield. Guardian Sigrid, Guardian Nemora, Guardian Raluch, and all: we are knowing of Guardian Sophia’s wound. We are… sharing of it, in before. But we are found of our healing. Guardian Sophia, too, will find of her healing.”

Sophia was glad now that Raluch was holding her hands so tightly, because she otherwise might’ve doubted her capability to continue standing up now instead of letting all five hundred feet of herself slowly crumple to her knees on the river stone: another impulse of weakness she furiously resented in herself, which only further exacerbated the encroaching blight of these unacceptable but necessary revelations.

Of course she wasn’t remotely unique in her struggle here, Sophia realized. Every Guardian, powerful and sage and nigh-eternal as they were now, had once been someone not so dissimilar from herself. Surely most if not all of them, too, had known romantic feelings that long ago seemed staunch enough to withstand heartbreak, sharp steel, and eventually even death, but which they’d all set aside for the sake of their duty, or at the very least altered those loves beyond any recognizable hint of equality (though Sophia couldn’t imagine what Raluch meant by “answering her need” and finding what “fed” her in this regard, if not by the bonds of soul partnership and marriage with Torv). All of them had done it. They must have, or else they would not be the revered generationally-unfailing protectors they were now. Even without hearing the actual story, she could detect a longing passion in Raluch’s voice that guaranteed the elder Guardian had made the same sacrifice, probably long ago, but such that it still deeply resonated inside her when she even spoke in circles around it today.

Sophia didn’t have to excise Torv from her life entirely, but nevertheless, so far as she understood, she could not become the Guardian her people needed if she still failed to ascribe herself the sky-high significance all of them – including her former partner – had already set at her feet. Which meant she stood alone. She had no choice. Profoundly as it hurt, with no end to that sensation in sight, she truly fathomed the full cost of Guardianship for the first time, and even why it had to be that way.

For perpetual minutes afterward, Sophia stood by the echoing waterside without speaking, her hands still clasped between Raluch’s smaller own. Her expression was as unmoving as the rest of her titanic body, feeling like the river was rushing ferociously over her right now, with her back pinned to the rocky basin below while wave after unbreathable wave trampled atop her. She wasn’t drowning in this vision, but also couldn’t figure out how to pull herself up from the water.

In the most peculiar of ways, Sophia was glad to have been taught such a painful lesson by Raluch, of all Guardians. Sympathetic as Sigrid and Nemora had already been to her during Sophia’s early hesitancy in bearing the deific prestige of her title, somehow she was made guilty to imagine standing in their presence a second time while stoically overcome with the unforeseen responsibilities of her station. She might’ve been tempted to endlessly implore them for ultimately-unhelpful minutiae of their own histories, their loves lost, and their eventual “healing.” Braving the truth here now instead hand-in-hand with this woman who, by the second, seemed more ancient than Sophia could likely estimate – not to mention wholly “all and greater beyond” – the neophyte Guardian felt no such expectation in either direction. Raluch appeared as content to stand here in the elongating silence as she had while hovering her hand above the rippling meniscus of the river, not waiting for anything at all, as if she might not even question if Sophia chose for them to stand here without speaking well-past nightfall. Without ever seeing Raluch’s home using her own eyes or even knowing what land she called home, Sophia had no doubt that this woman was exactly what her respective people believed her to be.

And, by contrast, if Sophia was to clock how close she herself felt now to achieving that same perceived loftiness in physically measurable terms rather than psychological, she would’ve been small enough that the grooved creases in Raluch’s open palms still holding her became comparatively the size of this yawning riverbed to the younger giantess.

“Thank you,” Sophia said after an uncountable grace period, and though she meant it sincerely on behalf of Raluch’s compassion, she’d never before in her life expressed gratitude for something which had harmed her so grievously as this conversation. “I… am lucky. That you would take this time, to help me understand.”

“Guardian Sophia is not lucky,” Raluch corrected, and there was greater tenderness in this statement than anything else she’d said. It was a kind of permission, Sophia realized, to feel what she was feeling. “Guardian Sophia is… all and greater beyond. She is becoming of herself. And, now, Guardian Sophia is needing of alone.”

Raluch was all too right in this assertion. The shorter Guardian only moved to ascend back up the hilly terrain toward the Citadel after unlacing her custodial grip on Sophia’s hands one finger at a time, and when she did, her footfalls upward were without sound or even the slightest visible effort to march those elevating slopes, as if it was a plain as flat as the ground just beside the water. Only when unquestionably certain she was in total solitude, and after disappearing around the same bend in the overhanging cliffs where she’d first seen Raluch emerge, did Sophia kneel upon the sand, cup her face in her hands, and indulge in a controlled but cutting expulsion of tears and throat-contained sobs that were thankfully overpowered by the noise of the river’s cascading.