Day 115
Haze does indeed retrieve the others from the Keep, and we spend the day moving towards the Deep Keep. It is built deep into a cliffside with some ruined Dwarven statuary around it. Hidden though we are, we can see elves patrolling around the outskirts. They’re young - Raelli’s age, and they play games and toss rocks and generally act like children. One older elf accompanies them, much like a supervisor.
As dusk falls, we gather again for a strategic meeting, this time relying on Zadiyah’s expertise. The plan does indeed change - she will take the two fists of Restored and try to lure out the Severed to chase them. If Haze supports them, it will be easy to make them surrender without having to spill any blood.
- Zadiyah, Haze, and the Restored will lure out the Severed.
- Bran, Camellia, Willow, and Hella and Kadia will stand guard and catch any Severed who we have missed.
- Alder, Ishvael, Knotrael, Tira, and I will go after the inner circle.
Between Tira’s delicate manipulation of magic and Kadia’s ice powers, reinforced by a Greater Circle, we hope to remove the fire creatures and destroy them without hurting any of the Severed. Alder can proceed ahead of us and incapacitate anyone who we find unprepared. In particular, Ishvael tells us, we need to watch out for two members of the inner circle. Wheeler is an extremely skilled master of illusion and transmutation, and Akka draws strength from his allies and needs to be separated from them.
Later in the night, Bran comes to speak with me as the others rest. I see the faint gleam of the future in his eyes.
“Tomorrow is important”, he tells me. Not earth-shatteringly important, but significant. We’re going to learn something important, but it won’t be bloodless. People will die, even though we will try not to let it happen.
The futures where everyone lives are thin and ephemeral, but still possible. That simply means we can go in with hope, prepared for disappointment.
Day 116
We move in the early dawn hours, with long natural shadows but enough light to give the Severed confidence. Zadiyah’s fists lead nearly all of the Severed out of the Deep Keep and Alder handles the five remaining of the common soldiers.
Joined as we are in a Circle, all of the inner family save for Zadiyah are as powerful as Haze. It wasn’t a surprise to me that his bond with Tira brought him into this Circle, but it’s something of a curious feeling to sense his surprise and glee at seeing through Alder’s eyes as he slips through shadows, unseen.
His senses are...incredible. When we come up against Akka he is asleep and we can easily manage him. If it weren’t for Haze’s eyesight, it would have been impossible to discern Wheeler’s illusions from the real thing. He slips through solid walls, transmuting them into something permeable. There’s a flicker of jealousy as we chase him deeper. I bet he can’t hurt people by cutting himself, at least.
Unfortunately he manages to sound the alarm before we can capture and incapacitate him. So when we finally find Lurick, he has five of the inner circle with him. As soon as we sense him, I can tell that he is different. Inside him is a creature that belongs with the Order. We manage to isolate one of the others before Lurick rips out the fire creatures from the remaining four, killing them. The fight against him and the four creatures is...unpleasant. It is manageable, given the enormous well of strength and power we have between us, but it is still difficult to capture him alive. Eventually, we do.
A thread of magic flows from Bran to a hidden door and he points, “That is what we’ve come to learn”.
Inside the small room is the stench of rotten food and waste, but not death. As the door is cracked open, a weak voice cries out against the light, “No light!! Have to have the dark. Still can’t hear her!”
Quietly, Tira draws the flame creature out of him and into the outer chamber where they can destroy it. I stay with him in the darkness as it leaves him and he mutters quietly that the darkness is cool again….cool again. His hands are so thin and frail. As I drape the shadows over him once more (“Swear it...always have….”), he goes quiet and slips into unconsciousness. I carry him out and leave him under Camellia’s care while the others get sorted out.
Returning to his room, I find myself surrounded by writing on the walls. He has been writing, seemingly for weeks, in the darkness. Oaths to the Empress, poetry, and mad ramblings. He begs forgiveness for being too weak to tear out his own eyes. I see the writing turn to violence and then see it scratched out. The most heartfelt writings have scorch marks and I can imagine the flames forcing him back from these thoughts, and him fighting through it.
Two journals are uncovered in the filth, and I sit and read about the years he has spent here. 2000 days.
Early on, he writes of getting lost in the Barrier trying to find his way back home to the Empress again. I read about finding the first other Severed, and feeling called to help others. I feel his madness begin when he first rescues an elf with intact oaths and it is painful to be around them.
Then he finds his sister, Mirena, but she is afraid of his hollowness and runs from him. He is so angry with himself for not being able to be around her and protect her, and it becomes a catalyst for his vengeance against the humans who do this. When Lurick enters the story, I read about his fire creature intensifying and brightening any light that gets near to him. In madness, he brings the Severed to the Deep Keep where he can shut himself away from any light at all.
I take out my own journal and copy down everything on the walls. I date them as best I can, sequentially. Not a leader or war wizard or a Dread Lady, but an archivist whose duty is to remember the stories of people who won’t live forever. When people in a thousand years look back on this war and remember, I want them to remember this man’s loyalty and love. Him, and Zadiyah. These are the people I’m sworn to.
Standing alone in the room, I reach out to the Empress. Come. Come see what your people are like, and how loved you are. I feel her ever so slightly beside me. Look after this one. Bring him to me. I ask her if anything can be done for the four we lost and feel her sadness in response. I will bury them in shade and remember their names.
Eventually I emerge and join the others, getting a better look at Petaran. He looks familiar, but I can’t quite place him. Perhaps a farmer? He’s not much older than Alder and my heart aches for what he has been through. I want him to live to be strong and return to a safe Frontier to his farm or grove or fields.
But there is still Lurick. I bring Knotrael, Zadiyah, and Alder with me to speak to him and find him remarkably calm, ready for death.
“Some things shouldn’t exist. I am one of them,” he tells me. This sombre, quiet elf in front of me is nothing to an Ingan or the one of the Collective, or the Order. This is a lost elf, not a monster.
It is harder to hold onto this thought as he calmly tells me that he broke his oaths and sought out the power of the Order of his own free will. He asked for the flames, and turned to the human gods because the Empress has no power here, or so he thought. He shrugs wryly as he looks at me, a clear contradiction to what drove him to this point.
In all my memory, and everything I have read, oathbreakers must die. Sometimes they are allowed to swear new oaths before their death, but none have lived. Still, his determination that he will die for his crimes bothers me. We are not at home, and he is not a judge. Neither am I, but I am all we have.
When I press him to swear new oaths and die an elvish death, he shakes his head,
“I don’t want Drael to know what I’ve done,”
His husband. He found his husband just in time to watch him die in the sun, starving. He was a glassblower. Lurick was the ledgerman. He says he has done the sums and found that he deserves to die for the crimes he has willingly committed and confessed to.
My heart aches too much to persuade him out of this tactfully.
Zadiyah kneels beside him and takes his hand, “You couldn’t have known what it would cost. You couldn’t have known that it would strip you of your will,”
And Alder, “Fire shapes things anew. What beautiful shape would your husband have made of you after going through this?”
Later, Bran and I forge a piece of glass out of magic and sand. It is a small flame, inky black at the centre with gold tendrils and edgles. Shadows at dawn, at the core of a flame whose shape disappears when you focus on the darkness. The more you stare at it, the less flame is there, and the more it becomes just a twist of shadows and light.
We leave Lurick alone with the glass piece and his thoughts. I need time too, to decide whether I could kill him after swearing new oaths, and what to do if he won’t swear. We have time though.
Day 120
Over the next several days, Bran goes to fetch wagons from the human village. He and I decide that the younger Restored will go to the Weaver’s village to heal and learn how to be young again. Show me a war worth using children and I’ll show you an army that deserves to lose.
In just a few days, we manage to collect all the former Severed and bring them back into the shade.
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