Chapter Text
While many remember Huatli for her words and her now-lost spark, fewer remember the fire her title speaks of. A Warrior-Poet. While an orator first, such a station still commands the respect of a warrior, and the Sun Empire’s many skirmishes against the Legion of Dusk, in whatever tatters it remains are ample example of the Dinosaur Knight’s prowess. However, there is always the fear and danger a warrior must face when setting out to battle. Few know the fear so well as Huatli, and fewer still could speak to it as gracefully as she. In the mornings, Saheeli would kiss her lover on the cheek and then on the mouth to see her off, the first for good luck and the second for myself.
But fear is always founded in something, and Huatli, while experienced, accomplished and powerful, was not infallible.
To Huatli, all dinosaurs were beautiful. Any of the wondrous creatures she had fought alongside were, to her, comrades just like her fellow knights, and some more still, like siblings or even children.
Huatli had raised Nazcanta from a hatchling, had given the little raptor soft down and warm fabrics to nest upon when he was merely days old. She made herself like a mother to him, and they together had weathered the rise of Orazca, the constant warring of the Sun Empire against the Legion of Dusk, the Phyrexian invasion and most recently the reopening of Ixalan’s core. Mount and rider were so deeply intertwined, each so aware of the other that knights who fought alongside Huatli and her dinosaurs in battle would liken them to a single warrior, two who fight united as one.
And so, when the now adult Raptor bucked beneath her, Huatli knew something was deeply awry.
The vampires Huatli and her company had been tracking for the last eight hours had given them hard chase, that when the two groups finally met, both were exhausted beyond their means, and the ensuing fight quickly became a brutal and scrappy affair, with both sides refusing to give either ground or weakness. So when Huatli noticed an opening in the vampires’ formation, she took it and pried it wide open, her and Nazcanta breaking forward in a run to slash at the now-scattered line of golden plate and sallow skin. One vampire bolted from the line in an attempt to save it’s twisted unlife from the flashing talons, and Huatli urged her mount forward, to pounce on the fleeing bloodsucker.
Yet the Raptor for once knew something his rider did not, and balked at the blind leap toward the vampire before him, fearing the cliff behind that Huatli had missed in her fervor to press the advantage. Suddenly, Nazcanta shifted beneath Huatli, and she found her slick and eager hands, which had been rubbed raw beneath her gloves and loose from a day of tired riding, slipping from the reigns, and she tumbled from Nazcanta’s back.
Yet Huatli did not feel the air crushed from her lungs as she slammed into the ground. Instead she felt nothing save the air rushing past her body.
And she fell.
Nazcanta lowed mournfully as he watched his rider disappear over the cliff edge, and when the battle finally cleared and the vampires all lay slain, the remaining Sun warriors found the raptor sat facing the deep ravine, his rider nowhere to be seen and his tail swishing dolefully.
They spent nearly two hours searching for Huatli while one of their number remained behind to comfort the raptor, yet as the light was lost from the sky and the sun set, the grim decision was made to return to Orazca without their leader.
Even as he was urged to leave by another of the riders, Nazcanta resisted, and cast a final look over the cliff, hoping to hear the voice of his rider and friend. Even then, his ears were met only by the roaring of the vast river below.
Saheeli Rai loved her home. Once, she would have been happy to call anywhere on her home plane so, but after meeting Huatli and the both of them lost their sparks, she had simply been met with the reality that there was nowhere else that had Huatli, and the two women had made their home in Orazca.
And today, Huatli is late.
Saheeli may never have been the best at waiting, particularly waiting patiently, but after the second hour passes with no knock on the door or the accompanying jubilance of Huatli’s greeting, a disquieted worry begins to add itself to her initial displeasure.
Every now and then, she voices her annoyance to the now-cold dinner spread, and occasionally kicks at the floor in equal parts boredom and frustration. “When that infuriating woman gets back, I am going to hug her so tightly it will hurt.”
Saheeli has just decided that she should eat alone and in silence(really, Huatli would have some explaining to do when she did return) when a much-awaited knock at the door has her striding toward it with an admonishment on her lips, but even as she reaches for the handle she realises the knock was different, only a pair of beats and much too light for it to be Huatli, whose fist instead raps out a confident rhythm whenever she returns home to Saheeli.
When she opens the door, the sight of three exhausted knights still in the day’s full armour greets her.
Blindsided after an afternoon spent in suspense, Saheeli has only her temper with which to respond. “Well? I did not cook enough for seconds if I am to seat all of you, so there must be some other reason for your being at my door. Where is she? Has she done something again?”
“Mrs. Rai —” One of the knights begins, but is cut off near-immediately by Saheeli.
“Ms. Rai, please, though I am sure one of us will change that soon.”
“Very well, Ms. Rai — I believe you are aware of what our company’s engagement was today. That we were to confront and slay the remainder of a vampire contingent that had survived a shipwreck.”
“She did tell me that, yes. She also told me that she would be back in time for us to share a meal.”
“...Yes.” Beneath the fluster she no doubt had caused to colour the knight’s tone, Saheeli gets the sense that something is deeply wrong. The consolatory expressions that all three of the knights wear, let alone the fact that there are three of them makes Saheeli’s mind grind to a halt, and her breath catches in her lungs, the air suddenly seeming impossibly thick and heavy, like a lake rushing down her throat to drown her.
“May we come in? I think this might be easier if you were sitting down and comfortable—”
The words sent a crater into Saheeli’s gut, and she speaks without thinking. “Something did happen, didn’t it?” Her voice wavers as she struggles to keep her mind from thoughts of all of the possible horrors that might have befallen Huatli. “Is she alright? What happened? Where is she? Will I be able to go and see her?”
As she ushers the three knights inside the little house and moves to sit on the chair before the fireplace where, in the evenings and after they had both recounted their days to the other, she and Huatli would—
Not now, I mustn’t worry, that idiot must come home to me, Saheeli thinks, biting her lip to stifle her sobs and flicking a hand over her eyes to swipe away nascent tears before turning to the now-sat knights.
“Tell me. Everything, I need to hear it all.”
A different knight to the one that had spoken before now speaks, this one taller, her armour marking her as a rider, like Huatli. “After our company had slain the last of the vampires, we found her mount, Nazcanta, alone, waiting at the edge of a ravine cliffside. We searched for hours, yet were unable to find Huatli, and after conferring amongst ourselves, it was found that the last any of us saw of her was her pressing the attack, towards the cliff. This, and the agitation her mount showed led us to believe she had fallen into the ravine. As things stand, Ms. Rai, we do not know if Huatli is alive.”
Saheeli searches for words for a minute, finding none and simply letting her tears fall, her expression holding in it shock and disbelief, before finally it is subsumed in grief as Saheeli lets the sobs punch into her, doubling over in her seat and holding her head in her hands.
Breathless and warbly, she admits the knights to leave, rejecting any offers for company, citing that they are all far more exhausted than is feasible and when none of them deny this, they leave, turning to give her farewells and condolences.
Only when they are gone and she is returned to the seat before the fireplace, does Saheeli let the grief utterly consume her.
Amidst it all, she finds herself returning to the kisses she had given Huatli as she had left that morning, and wishes she hadn’t stopped at only two.