Rakhālī-Artekite Duel

## The Battle of Burning Snow

“Snow is not meant to burn.”

The words rung out through a silent landscape. The ringing in her ears was rhythmic.

Here stood Elisheva. Here stood the culmination of her naïveté. Here stood Elisheva, and nobody else, at the core of a frozen wasteland.

Scalded were her fingertips, she who had cursed Olākhmēnū.

“Snow is not meant to burn,” sang the grass to the lilacs. “Snow is not meant to burn,” sang the lilacs to Dēsh. “Snow is not meant to burn.” sang Dēsh to zemself.

This tune, Dēsh hummed. The dance, Dēsh followed. There, at the end of zir journey, was the voice that echoed and drove zem mad. A cruel trick to play, Dēsh thought, for this was no treasure. This was no prize, no reward, no comfort. This was recklessness, this was cruelty, and this was the catalyst for a battle unknown.

To say there was a “last one standing” would have been false, for Elisheva laid in the snow, nearly as broken and bloody as her opponent.

Elisheva, the naïve wizard, held a desperation within. A desperation to live, a desperation to fix what she could, an obligation to live with her mistake. Perhaps it was selfish, to feel grief at the corpse beside her. Perhaps it was the most selfless thing Elisheva had done in a while, to feel grief and sympathy for another. Dēsh couldn’t have been much younger than her, though time had torn into both bodies and souls.

“Snow is not meant to burn,” sang the voice of a child.

Nor was snow meant to seep into corpses, smelling like lilacs and fire and creation. Yet here was a corpse, or something of the sort, experiencing both. Here was the corpse breathing in that smell and feeling the warmth of someone holding zir hand, warmth of a weakened body next to zem.

Elisheva closed her eyes. An apt place to die; amidst her greatest mistake. This was fate, after all. To deny fate...

To deny fate tasted like sheep milk and honey. Choking on denial, as it washed down her throat, would be an equally apt way to go. But who fed her denial, who fed her rebellion? There were none but her in this wasteland, none but her and...

Elisheva opened her eyes, strength coursing through her body. The corpse beside her was gone; now, above her, stood ze who was thought dead, drinking what she, too, presumably had; “mana.”

“Why did you save me?” asked the wizard.

“As I died, I realized I was a hypocrite,” ze responded, with a half-burned head. “I, too, have made mistakes. I was just as reckless as you.”

“But surely, my mistake is far beyond the scale of what you’ve ever done.”

“That may be true, but if you had truly ruined Olākhmēnū, he would not have saved me.”

“You still didn’t have to save me. It would have been just as well to let me die. Merciful, even.”

“Death is not mercy, not to those who love you.”

“Nobody loves me. Nobody has for a while now.”

“Don’t you think you deserve to have love? Rakhāl, lonesome as she was, did not reject love when it showed hir face.”

“That was Rakhāl. I am no goddess.”

“Aren’t you?” ze shouted as ze walked away. The wizard let zem—the milk in her body had curdled.

In time, the barren wasteland became less barren. There were survivors here and there, there were travellers who would get stuck in the snow and make their home. There were people who asked things of the wizard, who felt obligated to grant requests. There were people in this undead land, this land of Artekep. There were people, enough to make a nation, yet the wizard felt no love from them, no matter how much she gave.

Time had passed. Enough time that the duelist who saved her life was probably long-dead by now. Enough time for the wizard to grieve this fact, enough that the wizard wanted to visit zir grave.

The nation of the duelist's graveyard was unlike anything the wizard had experienced before. It was far warmer and lusher than Artekep ever was; there were bees buzzing through the air and people bustling through the city centre and farms.

The graveyard itself seemed light and gentle, though the wizard was the only one there. She searched through each row, though there were no years marked on any gravestone.

As the sun set and night fell, as the wizard gave up on her search, she heard the groundskeeper making their way. Perhaps it had been too long, perhaps the duelist had died before the graveyard was even created. The wizard had finally made her peace with her opponent’s death, but she could not bear the idea of zem being forgotten.

As she walked away from the graveyard to the neighbouring lilac garden, she drank in the silence. It, too, tasted like denial of fate, but nowhere as sweet as it was before. She held a flower in her palm, grazing her fingers across its delicate petals, letting her mind wander.

The quiet of the night was broken, when a name rang through her ears, like a bell being struck. It was a name she had not heard since she duelled, it was a name thought forgotten to time. Yet, there ze were, looking as ze did the day they fought. The wizard responded in kind, saying a name this nation only knew in ancient documents.

A wind rushed through the air. Laughter followed, or perhaps it was tears.

“How long has it been?” asked the groundskeeper.

“Long enough that I grieved your death,” the wizard responded. “How are you still alive?”

“I don’t know. I kept wondering when I’d age—when I’d wrinkle or weaken or die—and it never happened. Children are clumsy, though. Perhaps Olākhmēnū didn’t know his own strength.”

“Why didn’t you contact me?”

“I was scared,” ze admitted.

The wizard reached out for her adversary. Ze didn’t recoil as she took zir hand.

“I didn’t want to battle you. I didn’t want to kill you. I’ve mourned you, over and over. Please... please don’t be scared of me,” she begged.

“I wasn’t scared of you. I was scared of what happened after we battled. I said things you shouldn’t have been told, things I regret.”

“Oh.”

Cold wind blew through the lilacs. The groundskeeper took out zir woolen shawl, wrapping it around both of them.

The wizard clutched the lilac in her palm tighter. “I took it to heart, you know. What you said about deserving love. And it didn’t change anything—after all this time, no matter how much love I’ve given, I didn’t get it back. Do you know how much it hurts, how right you were, when, during all this time, nobody has even cared to ask my name?”

“No, I don’t, and it’s horrid for me, too! I’m scared to love anyone because I will lose them much too soon, I can’t work with other people—it’s all noise and silence and...”

“...loneliness.”

No more words fell from their mouths. This was it, then. This is what the aftermath of their battle was; deafening nothingness. They laid down on the grass, at some point, still covered by the shawl of wool. As they held each other, someone cried. Neither knew who—perhaps it was both. To say anything at this point felt monumental, and yet...

...the groundskeeper broke the silence. “Is that all, then?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are we all that we have, after everything?”

The wizard laughed softly. “Well, I have Artekep, and you have the graveyard... but... yes. I think after everything, that’s all that I cherish.”

“You cherish me?”

“Something like that.”

“*Elikheleva*... I cherish you too.”

A name, unmistakably. It was tradition in the nation. Upon marriage, spouses often granted each other new names. The groundskeeper was asking the wizard to marry zem.

The wizard smiled. “You love me, *Dvāsh*?”

“After everything, how could I not?”

Snow is not meant to burn, but as Elikheleva and Dvāsh traced each other’s faces and hands and scars, they basked in the ever-sweet taste of denial.