1.5 A Living Weapon

General Summary

Day 7

In the morning we wake in a communal pile of cuddling. It was the best sleep I’ve had in recent memory (or any memory, I suppose), and it feels familiar. Rosalia looks extremely awkward when we wake up and busies herself with breaking camp. Bran simply hugs me. As I thought before - these are my people now.   We head off again and travel until early afternoon, when we are attacked by a group of six red-eyed foxes. In the thick of the battle I recall another spell that will hurt others and heal me. I’ve been trying to internalize this magic as self-sacrificing but this one is distinctly not. I don’t use it, but it occupies my thoughts as we continue to travel.   The prickling magic gets stronger and stronger as we walk until we find ourselves by a small hill with a rough archway into a natural cave. Two of the bears that Rosalia had told us about are waiting at the entrance and after a brief strategy talk, we attack!   Rosalia gives a war cry to strengthen us and it feels like her own kind of magic, in a way. It strengthens us to hear her charging ahead. Bran glows with blue flames and charges in with her while I hang back and fire arrows and blood magic. The bears go down but so does Rosalia, and it isn’t until Bran’s flames fade that he has the presence of mind to heal her. He warned us about this rite that clouds his mind in a fog of battle, and it seems he spoke truthfully.   Deeper in the cave we find a door flanked by elaborate columns. There is archaic elvish text that reads something like “seal”, “unquenchable bloodthirst” and… “prison...punishment...judgement”. Rosalia remarks that bugs and clowns are her biggest fears. “Death is just death...there are worse things” she tells me.   Inside the door we find a 50 foot hall lined with oil braziers, surrounding a 20 foot diameter magic circle. In the centre is an open sarcophagus with a red mist coalescing above it. The shade of an elven wizard forms out of it, clad in intricate robes with runes down the seams. I recognize it as the garb of a Dread Lord...but the sarcophagus is engraved with a list of crimes: Murder, torture, enslavement of souls, sacrifice of the unwilling, genocide of the Antarri people. I know that this crimes make him unworthy of the uniform he wears.  

I am in a vast palace. There are golden statues, elaborate columns. It’s a Great Hall with hundreds of armoured, uniformed soldiers. The front ranks are elaborately dressed officers, generals, wizards. There are nobles in attendance. I am kneeling before a vast, dark throne. Despite the light that enters the hall, nothing illuminates the area around the throne. The darkness can’t be penetrated. As I kneel, a voice from the darkness says “Rise, Dread Lady,” and people come up behind me and drape formal robes around my shoulders. There’s cheering as I stand. Now the word has meaning: To be a Dread Lord or Lady is to be someone who has become a living weapon for their people, both feared and respected. Their people have faith in them to protect them from those who would harm them. They are someone whose magic and power is so fearsome that armies will retreat before them. There is a feeling of pride, accomplishment, and that I have joined a very small group of people who hold this title.

  If this is what he once was (as I once was), then he profanes the title with his existence and his actions. He hurt the people he was sworn to protect - using their pain and suffering as fuel for his power. Had I known him in life, I would have hunted him to the ends of the earth for this. The Dread Lords and Ladies of his time would have done the same. They must have sealed him here   “Come to me” he hisses as he presses up against the confines of his circular prison, “I will have my vengeance. Freedom! I will have your soul...you will carry me from this place. I will walk this world again!”   Foolish. He should know this can’t work without a sample of my blood. Still, his magic is leaking across the boundary of the circle and I fear for my companions. I usher them back out of the room to explain. The circle is containing him but not necessarily his magic or influence on the world. It is old and failing - it should force him into the sarcophagus and bind him to sleep but instead he is...leaking...for lack of a better word.   Normal magic with normal rules won’t help here. The magic used to bind something must oppose whatever it imprisons. Fortunately his magic was so terrible that there is a handy opposition: against his torture and sacrifice of the unwilling, we can willingly offer our own blood to bind him.   Rosalia refuses to let me do this alone. She and I walk for ten minutes around the circle, slowly dripping our own blood onto it as the runes glow and sharpen in the stone until this evil shade is cowering against the sarcophagus. Only at the end does Bran walk into the circle itself and close the lid, sealing it with his own blood across a smaller magic circle on the top.   When we are finished, the air feels clean once again. I’m left with my own thoughts about who I must have been. If I was a Dread Lady, sworn to protect my people and cleave through their enemies like a sword through flesh...then how must I have failed? What choice did I make to be here and alive amongst humans instead of dead alongside the bodies of my people? I can only hope that I would not have abandoned them, and that I am here on some last-ditch effort to change the tides of their fate.  

Here lies the spectre of man unworthy of a name or title. His soul was imprisoned here long ago for his crimes: Murder, torture, enslavement of souls, sacrifice of the unwilling, and genocide of the Antarri people. The magic that binds him is strong, but will not last forever. Should there be strange and possessed animals roaming the land, know that this is the source, and that his imprisonment must be renewed.   On [Date], we willingly left our own blood to fortify to the circles that bind him. Someone must again be willing to do this, or his strength will continue to grow.   Be strong, be steadfast, and may both the shadows and the light protect you.