Ghosts

(Content warning: this focuses on the deaths of the student-activists in tonight's game and all the people they remind Nel of. Given all kinds of current events, this may be difficult to read.)
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Nel knelt in the Temple of Nicodemus and prayed for the spirits of the murdered university student activists she'd seen at the house. She couldn't get the terror on their faces or the agony of their wails out of her head. And she couldn't stop imagining the faces of the idealistic young university students she knew among them.
 
It could have been Schatzi, pushing for a Parliament for common people; Ottilie, inventing things no other mind could think of to make lives better; Cardinal learning to fight for herself and her loved ones; Peg, wanting to burn down a bad system that hurt people and making sure children had beautiful things; Violet, who had left the university to follow her convictions and was facing the threat of a serial killer with nerves of steel; Lady Orsei, who had wanted so badly to help with the school in the Warrens; or even Lady Orlov -- whose ideals were different from Nel's, but full of conviction all the same. It could have been any of them if they'd been born a couple of generations ago instead.
 
They could have been her own kids or other students in a few years.
 
They'd had no idea what was coming for them and weren't hardened fighters. They were brilliant young people with good hearts who wouldn't have been able to imagine the rooks slaughtering them before it happened. They must have died asking why.
 
Her heart had broken for them and she had ached to comfort them. It felt so important that they know that what they had done had mattered. That people knew their names and that they had made a difference. The world in that vision without the festival--without their deaths--had been so grim.
 
The words she had spoken to them had come so naturally. She had forgotten about the journals and the job, even the danger. She just couldn't shake the terror on their faces or the pain in their screams. And in that moment, nothing mattered except trying to ease it.
 
And now, at the temple, she asked Nicodemus to continue to comfort them, to give them peace and rest. She prayed that Nicodemus show them how they had changed Eisen, how something like the school in the Warrens was possible because of them, all the good they had done. It would never take away the terror and pain. But maybe it will fill their spirits with more than that -- with pride and peace so they could enter their rest knowing they would sleep the sleep of the just.