Circumstances Leading to the Conclusion

[Visla Eraclaire]

People change when they come back from war. That's what all the stories Visla read in her youth told her. A man returns with bloodstained hands to a society that no longer needs him, that was the way it went sometimes. Other times he came back a hero and lived happily ever after. Either way, something within him was always different somehow. Visla felt about the same as ever.

The wind whipped through her hair and the sea churned all around the small ferry as it cut its way through foaming waters. Visla glanced over the side and thought that perhaps this was why she felt no different. Waves crash, whirlpools swirl, the sea is never in the same place, but no one would say it truly changes. People look to it as a constant, a place of return, a lifespring eternal.

Visla knew no one would ever describe her that way, but still. Maybe no matter how much her life battered her against the rocks or dragged her into the depths, it was always the same life. Killing a few clerics, living in a nation torn apart, seeing the evil that men do, these were not the sort of things which could change her. It would take a hurricane the likes of which none had ever seen to change the face of the ocean.

Shaking her head free from the clinging thoughts, she turned to the white horse beside her. It was unusually calm even as the deck rocked up and down. She wondered if it had endured a much longer crossing to bring it to Salvar. Its eyes sparkled with such an intelligence that she felt almost as if she could ask it, but she simply patted the beast along its long nose and glanced back out at the waves.

Even as the horse stood quiet and still, Aleva's hooves clicked against the deckboards. She paced from stem to stern, impatiently glancing for signs of land. The coast of Corone had long vanished from the ship's wake and the island destination was still shrouded in the mist beyond the prow. Her face was a pointed scowl and her clawed hands were slung crossed over her chest as it heaved with frustrated sighs.

“We could have flown in a fraction of the time and for free,” the succubus griped as her patrol brought her close to Visla.

“You must have been training while I wasn't looking if you can carry a horse aloft,” Visla replied, her fingers now combing through the alabaster mane. “I wasn't going to leave Alfonse behind.”

“Oh, lovely, you've named it now. Next thing we'll be taking in stray dogs.”

Normally some retort would have lept to her tongue, but the constant banter was becoming tiresome. She let Aelva languish in silence until she could see hints of shoreline breaking through the fog. Only once a small wooden pier came into view did she move at all, pulling herself up onto Alfonse's back. Words only came as the ship came in to dock and the tiny vessel's nameless captain ushered the only passengers off. Visla rode alongside him, tossed a bag of coin and then called back to her companion from halfway down the gangplank.

“Heel.”

[Visla Eraclaire]

Visla had trotted a ways from the isolated wooden pier before she turned back and saw her companion still standing on the ship, arms crossed obstinately. She shrugged and gently spurred Alphone forward, through the loose seaside soil toward the wood that dominated most of the island. The inconsequential strip of land that had been her home for what still amounted to the majority of her life was little more than a large forest, only interrupted by the sea and the occasional work of human hands. The fields that comprised her ancestral estate had been cleared of trees generations before. The academy where she had first met Aelva was raised from within the wooded depths by the will of an archmage dead and buried in time immemorial. She had no desire to see either of those places again.

Visla's destination was of a far more recent vintage, a forward-thinking enclave of scientists that amounted to little more than a curiosity up until a few years before Visla's birth. Uiria was now a center of learning second to none, in its own estimation at least. It had been her shelter before and she hoped to hide herself again within its red brick walls and verdant courtyards, at least until she could decide where to go next.

While she felt sure that the time in Salvar had not changed her, it had, at the least, given her a measure of perspective. Odd as it was to wax sentimental in the face of such atrocities, it made her think about her future, or lack there of. Even as a new Salvar sprouted from the corpse-laden northern soils, she wondered if a new life could spring from her own bloody past. It seemed unlikely, especially as her only confidant passed out of view amidst the boughs of the great wood.

Since she had left this island, Aelva had dictated much of her course. Searching for a way to bring her back, struggling to accomplish it, to confirm that it was done once and for all, that was what had brought her to the icebound northlands in the first place. What had followed was merely a series of unfortunate diversions, excuses not to examine her hazy future. Her magic gone, her already fragile health further deteriorated, a white shock of hair, oddly translucent, bore silent testiment to all she had given. And for what, she thought, a spiteful demon that controlled her at best and ignored her at worst.

Or perhaps it was the other way around.

It was a long way to Uiria through unmarked paths that only a native had any chance of picking out from the undergrowth of fallen leaves and twisted brambles. As her course wound deeper into the forest, she was happy to be free for a moment. The ignorant would call her a demonologist, a summoner, a master of dark creatures, but in truth she was little more than a servant of the she-fiend. For every oddly cold embrace and occasional kindness, there were a dozen verbal barbs and overbearing requests. Still every demeaning remark seemed to hurt less while the hints of compassion grew more significant with every day.

The noose was tightening, she thought, as she passed through a coil of ivy draped over a low hanging branch. After the better part of an hour, she expected Aelva would catch up, make some blithe excuse and keep her from the introspective depths she was presently plumbing, but there was no such luck. Even as the woods gave way and Visla caught sight of the Uiria silhoetted against a drooping sun, she was still alone but for her horse.

The crater where, to be honest, she was not sure what had happened, had yet to be filled. She glanced down at the ring on her right hand, wondering if the gem would feel a resonance with the place it had been found, but there was nothing, only a gentle breeze and the dull sound of hoofbeats in the dirt. Her steed craned its neck down to graze a bit on the newly available grasses. There was still a small hill before the low brick walls that marked off the town, but Visla decided to dismount and walk the rest of the way, leaving Alphonse to rest a moment in the clearing.

“Come along when you're ready,” she said as she patted the beast on its nose. She felt foolish for a minute, speaking to it so, but it almost seemed to nod in assent before she turned toward the berm between her and the city.

She had ascended but a few steps before she heard a shrill noise that echoed in her memories. Three figures darted from the crest of the hill and leveled the distinctive weaponry she had come to expect from Uirians. Long barreled rifles, like those forged by dark elves, but with a polished sheen and with energy for ammunition, whatever powered them produced a startling screech when activated. Visla had only seen them once or twice before, but it was enough to stop her in her tracks.

“Halt! Who goes there?” said one of the guardsmen, actually a woman by the tone of her voice.

Visla collected her thoughts for an answer, but too slowly for the tastes of the other two, who gibbered to one another in a language she could not understand. The only word with a hint of familiarity was a name, Belial. Her memories of him were slower than their trigger fingers and before she could recall anything of significance, shimmering bolts of energy sailed down the hill toward her.

Ducking reflexively, the dirt around her kicked up into a cloud as the shots impacted. She was left with a singed mark in the arm of her traveling garments and the intense heat of a burn but no wound. Undoubtedly, Aelva's skin had just sizzled in precisely the same spot and without thinking further on the consequences, Visla's pain-addled mind reached out for her companion.

[Visla Eraclaire]

There wasn't time enough for the ritual to summon her, but with the slightest throught, Visla transposed herself with the succubus. A torrent of darkness obscured her vision and left her sitting in the sandy soil. Her arm still burned as she glanced at a circle of tracks left by what must have been hours of pacing. It would seem Aelva had no intention of coming after her and was simply waiting for the call.

“Well, she got it,” Visla started to say, but her words collapsed into a scream as she felt a hail of bolts that would have burned her to a cinder. She hoped Aelva had fared better, but even that thought was difficult to form as she clutched futilely at her uninjured body.

The boat that had brought her was long gone and her screams drowned out even the sound of the waves. The echoes of her own agony were the only sounds she could hear as she lay prostrate staring straight into the beclouded afternoon sky. She heard nothing of the footsteps approaching her through the sand, nor the voice of the man that soon appeared over her, until he spoke directly to her, or at her as it were.

“Not a demon after all,” he declared, pressing a pair of spectacles closer to his eyes. “And not an illusion either. You must be her master.”

Visla wanted to correct him or throttle him, but she did neither, only managing to muffle her latest cry of pain.

“If you could hold off wailing a moment, I'll do what I can to assist you,” he said in a confident voice that hid within it a small squeak of immaturity not yet drowned in hubris.

His eyes darted over Visla's body for wounds, looking to the places she grasped at and then to the singed fabric on her arm but finding nothing. It surprised him for only a moment. Visla wondered if he knew of her link to Aelva, but her mind could only briefly entertain such thoughts before a wave of pain washed it empty again.

“Starting to suffer from the Wasting. That succubus must be more than an errand girl to you. How unfortunate,” he crowed as he waited for one of his servants, still out of Visla's view, to hand in a vial. “Drink,” he added, thrusting the glass to her lips.

She held the liquid in her mouth for a moment, eager to spit it back in his face, but as she felt a cool numbing sensation, she swallowed it and felt a tingling paralysis overtake the pain that plagued her. She could feel her consciousness drifting after only a few moments and she struggled to reach the dagger on her hip. Her fingers wrapped around the hilt and she raised it a few inches before her hand grew tired and limp. The blade fell into the sand and she felt a strong pair of arms lifting her from the ground. One of the man's servants slung the frail Visla over his shoulder. Her eyes remained fixed on the leader as she was carried away from him.

Light brown hair falling to either side of his eyes, a sharp nose and pursed lips, lavish garments and a pair of leather gloves, she tried to burn the details into her mind even as it slipped away from her. She saw him kneel down and snatch the blade from the ground.

“Looks like you dropped something. I'll return it to you when you come to in Uiria,”

Relief that they were going the same place was the last thing Visla remembered.

[Visla Eraclaire]

A sweet scent dragged Visla out of a hazy dreamless sleep, a familiar waft of vanilla with the warmth of rum. She opened her eyes and found herself in the same house she had arrived at after Aelva had been taken from her years ago. The room she lay in was barren except for the bed itself, though there were bits of discoloration on the walls that suggested pictures had once hung. The floor was worn unevenly around the shadow of a missing desk and other cabinets. Visla was still surveying the emptiness as the door swung open and Elenore entered carrying the tea that had ushered her back to the waking world.

“Leonard’s estimation of when you would wake up was accurate almost to the minute. I’m not sure whether to be impressed or frightened,” the elder woman said as she sat the tray down on a stand over Visla’s chest.

“Is that the bastard’s name?” Visla said weakly, taking one of the cups and sipping indelicately. “Neither, just send him on his way.”

“It’s not that simple, I’m afraid,” Elenore mused as she took her own cup and paced toward a window that looked out toward the city center. “If I were in your position, I’d say just the same thing. I envy you, even.”

It was not something Visla heard often, or ever, in fact. Elenore was perhaps ten years her senior, and she imagined that she shared a great deal in common with the woman’s former self of a decade past. Now, though, she seemed matronly before her time, burdened with responsibilities. Visla by no means viewed her life as a free one, but when she looked at the worrisome look on Elenore’s face she felt a small glimmer of gratitude, at the very least, that no one relied on her.

“The last time we saw each other, it was a very dark day. For a time, I thought we would come out of it stronger, but,” she paused, sipped her tea and sat the cup down on the windowsill. “Well, it’s not your burden to bear. There’s a more pressing matter, in any event. Your, ahem,” she turned back to Visla awkwardly, “companion is detained downstairs. I’m prepared to pardon her, given the circumstances, but it’s a difficult sell for the townspeople.”

“What?” Visla sat up in bed and the teaservice clattered. She barely managed to catch the kettle before it toppled. “What’s Aelva done?”

“Killed one of my guardsmen, I’m afraid. She says it was in self-defense and the others confirm that. Still, it was the last thing the city needed. I’ll not turn you away, but if you are merely stopping by, it might be best,” she hesitated diplomatically.

“To get out,” Visla added bluntly and sighed. She knew she had no place to sulk. Were she Elenore, she would not even have been so kind about it. All the same, it was just another place she wasn’t welcome. She finished her tea and set the cup back on the service.

“Stay the night at least, or as long as you need. Leonard wanted to meet with you. He said something about being able to help your ‘condition,’ though I’m unsure to what he refers,” she said, gathering up the kettle before Visla spilled it at her next remark. “He’s in the celler… guarding the succubus.”

Visla tossed the blankets aside and jumped to her feet. She almost fell straight to the floor as her knees wobbled. Elenore steadied her and lead her down to the foyer where her belongings were set by the door. She snatched up her cane and hurried down to the cellar to confront two people she presently despised.

[Visla Eraclaire]

Elenore stood back as Visla flung the door open and trudged down into the basement. There were no proper lights, but an unnatural blue glow illuminated the steps, creeping around the corner from some as yet unseen source. Visla recalled when she had awoken here after losing Aelva the first time. She remembered the kind woman who had tended her, Elenore's late mother. She remembered her determination to get Aelva back, the many books she read, the lengthy journeys alone with the pulsing crystal in her pocket. If those memories were written on a page she would have burned them on the spot.

She swung around the corner and found Aelva, transfixed in cerulean shackles. Beneath her a circle of fluorescent powder encircled a glyph filled with dozens of unfamiliar runes. The succubus' face was frozen with pain, and yet Visla felt nothing through the link between them.

“It serves you right. I turn to you in a moment of weakness and now you've stained my hands with blood again,” Visla snarled, pacing around the frozen form of her erstwhile companion.

“She can't hear you, you know,” Leonard chided, emerging from the shadows with the blue light gleaming from the small lenses on the end of his short pointed nose.

“Shut up, you're no better,” Visla snapped back. “Release her. She's not yours to bind.”

“Very well, Lady Summoner,” the man chuckled and walked closer, pulling his gloves tight around his hands. “I thought I'd take a moment to speak with you, while she's otherwise occupied.”

“Say what you will and be done with it,” Visla spat the words from her mouth and crossed her arms. The man seemed utterly unapologetic for his rendering her unconscious; even if it was for her own good, courtesy dictated at least a token gesture.

“You seem quite attached to this specimen. It's the only explanation for your condition, as far as I can tell,” he continued, pacing back and forth and glancing at the succubus' rigid form. “I would not deign to lecture you on the subject, but it seems you are an amateur at demon-binding. That's why you suffer so,” he trailed off almost wistfully.

“I didn't bind her. She's not my slave. I don't even want her now,” Visla shouted, not fully considering her words. Her legs still trembled beneath her and her voice shuddered.

“All the better. I'll leave you to your reunion for now, but do come see me tomorrow, once you've fully recovered. The treatment is far less harsh than the one you've already endured,” he crowed.

“Why do you have any interest in helping me?”

“Beneficence.”

With that word and a flash of light, he and the binding circle around Aelva vanished. A lingering bit of laughter hung in the air as Visla knelt down next to the collapsed heap that was her succubus.

“Showy prick,” she muttered.

[Visla Eraclaire]

It was mid-evening by the time Elenore lead the two back to the room they had previously shared in town. Aelva had awoken mere moments after Leonard's departure but the two had not spoken a single word to one another. As the three women walked down the streets, Aelva was almost excessively talkative with Elenore while Visla folded her arms and nurtured a steely silence.

“I do apologize again, Lady Mephisto, for the loss of your soldier. Were that I had time to explain, perhaps it all could have turned out differently,” Aelva said with a regal air, as they finally arrived at the doorstep.

“What's done is done,” Elenore handed the key to the still silent Visla, adding, “Remember what we discussed.”

Visla slid the key into the lock. The mechanism turned stubbornly, almost but not entirely sticking. Aelva reached forward for a moment to assist, but Visla jabbed her firmly with her elbow and struggled a few more moments before there was a click. The door swung open to the small bedroom. A nightstand, a double bed, and a small wooden chair, it was just as they had left it. A few books Visla had left behind still lingered on the floor by the bed. She glanced at them momentarily and remembered the vainglorious philosophy she had read. It disgusted her now.

“So, now that we're alone, will you speak to me?” Aelva asked, taking her traditional spot in the chair as Visla flopped onto the bed, her arms still crossed and her face still stern.

“No.”

“Ah, we're making progress,” Aelva laughed and pointed toward the small lantern on the nightstand. It flickered to life with a green flame that set Visla in silhouette. “You can't seriously blame me for killing someone who almost killed you. How many people have we killed together now?”

“Too many.”

“Two words at a time now. I knew you couldn't keep your mouth shut for much longer. Stop sulking and tell me what Elenore meant when she handed you the key. What did she discuss with you?”

Visla paused for a moment, trying to think of three words to answer the question, then scowled as she found herself almost wrapped up in the succubus' stupid game. She simply turned on her side, away from the balefire lantern and closed her eyes.

“Fine,” Aelva said and rose to her feet, which quickly vanished, revealing the cloven hooves beneath. Her wings and horns sprouted as the human illusion melted away. “If this is how you're going to be, I'm going to go enjoy my freedom,” she declared and began to mutter in Infernal.

Visla's eyes shot open at the prospect of Aelva flying through the skies of Uiria at night.

“Wait!”

The succubus continued her chant and ribbons of shadow shrouded her small vestigial wings, bringing them to a mighty span. With her spell finished, she opened the door and turned back for a moment, “I'm your dog aren't I? If you need me you'll just yank on my leash.”

With that and an otherwordly flutter of her umbral wings, she was gone. The fire in the lantern snuffed out and Visla was alone in the darkness.

[Visla Eraclaire]

She sat still for a few moments, waiting for Aelva to come back, just as she had waited for her to follow at the shore. There was only silence, which she ultimately filled with her own muttering voice.

“I didn't bring you back for this. I didn't sacrifice so many people so we could hate each other. I didn't give up the only power I had to become a master or a slave. I just wanted you here, with me.”

She stood and strode through the room from memory. The shadow of a neighboring building choked the light from the night sky allowing none to trickle through the curtained window.

“Maybe not even you, maybe just anyone, maybe I am that pathetic. Would anyone do just as well? Did I choose you simply because it was a choice I could make myself? You couldn't reject me. Maybe I have bound you after all.”

Her own words cut her more deeply than any of Aelva's barbs. The hatred she felt in that moment was purer than any that had been directed at her. Those who called her heretic, witch, devil, they hated her without knowing her. There in the darkness, Visla knew herself better than she ever had, and she hated everything she found. She reached down to her hip and felt the missing loop of her belt where her dagger should have been.

“Not that it would do me any good.”

She walked toward the door and pushed it open, half-hoping that her companion would be waiting on the stoop. There was not a soul, until she stepped out.

The streets were dimly lit with flickering candles. Visla let herself wonder for a moment what had happened to the shimmering lights that had always given Uiria a certain charm. Perhaps it was part of the trouble that Elenore had not burdened her with, she thought. It was a burden she would gladly bear, in exchange for her own. As she wandered aimlessly down the cobblestone avenues, she imagined herself in Elenore's place.

So many people needed her.

Visla turned down the path she had walked down not long before, back toward the little house perched on the hillside just outside of town. She needed her too.

The low brick wall that encircled the town was within sight, with a meadow beyond and a dirt path winding its way to the house Elenore's mother and father had built. Visla could see it in the distance, lit from within. As foolish as she felt about it, that little light gave her a measure of hope. It gave her direction, even if it was only literal direction. She stepped off the paving stones and onto the loose earth of the trail and sighed.

[Visla Eraclaire]

As the meandered down the path lit only by a gibbous moon, she glanced to either side, idly scanning the surrounding countryside. Ahead there was the hill where her destination lay and behind the brick city, but in every other direction there was the great wood. A meadow stretched out before it but inevitably ended with the shadowed boughs and tangled undergrowth. Even to one at home in the darkness it seemed to take on a sinister air at night.

Visla turned away and kept her eyes focused ahead. She steadied her gait with her cane and tried to think of what she would say to Elenore when she arrived. The woman must be tired of apologies, she thought, and even moreso of pleas for aid. She still knew almost nothing of the city’s troubles; perhaps it was only by leaving them vague that she could muster the gall to entreat Uiria’s beleaguered leader for yet another favor.

“It isn’t a favor, really,” she muttered to herself, her whisper sharp in the still night air. “Asking for help is a burden, but asking for advice is a compliment.”

The excuse was hollow and dry from the moment it left her tongue. She let out a sigh and glanced back at the forest. If she were more able, she thought she could run straight into it. She could disappear beneath the branches and briars and never trouble anyone again. As it was, she could barely walk and she felt the sort of sickly hunger that refuses food. Staring deeply into the shadow, her foot knocked against a stray paving stone, jutting unexpectedly from the otherwise unfinished path.

Her frail body tumbled to the ground, with only time enough to turn her head and avoid a face full of dirt. She lay there a moment, aching straight through to her bones, before getting up on one knee and dusting off her tunic. There was a tear in the leg of her pants where she should probably have skinned her knee. It stung all the same and she wondered if Aelva was noticing a slight trickle of blood down her hoof.

Before she could linger on that thought for long, the sound of hoof beats came from the distance. Too quick for the bipedal succubus, she looked up to see Alphonse’s alabaster mane shimmering in the moonlight. The beast craned its neck down toward her and she steadied herself on his nose as she got back to her feet.

“I had forgotten you in all the commotion,” she said with genuine regret, looking him over for wounds. “It looks like you were just find without me though.”

Even as she sighed, the horse prodded her toward the saddle with his head. She climbed on and slumped forward, her head resting in his mane. “Let’s go introduce you to Elenore,” she said, not bothering to steer or prod him with her knees.

He started to trot forward along the path, but quickly darted to the right and began a gallop straight into the wood.

“Whoa!” her head shot up and she grabbed the normally neglected reins, trying to pull the beast back. He was hell-bent on continuing and no amount of feeble tugging could dissuade him.

[Visla Eraclaire]

Visla’s head grazed by low branches and she heard vines snapping as her disobedient steed forced its way into the thickets that lined the forest floor. She shut her eyes tight and covered her face with her arms. Just as well, it was only a few moments before the canopy swallowed up the moon and left nothing to see. Alphonse galloped on, drawn inexorably forward. Visla only drew back her arms and opened her eyes when she felt him come to a stop. A light as bright as a torch flickered in the distance, but shone in a blue hue, somewhere between sea and sky.

It was only a short distance away, obscured by a thick tangle of bushes and deadwood trees. Alphonse backed away and Visla looked him in one of his big brown eyes. The beast reared back, as if he realized his mistake. He signaled again for Visla to get on his back so the two could leave. Visla shook her head for reading so much into the mind of a horse, patted his nose, and shambled toward the thicket. If death waited within, at least it would end the stinging pain in her knee.

As she pulled back the stiff tendrils of a dead bush they cracked like brittle bones. She pushed through the wall of arboreal corpses until she could see clearly what was at the center of the ring. Moonlight peeked through a break in the forest’s leafy ceiling, but was still so stifled that the figure within lit his work with an orb of blue flame that gave the tiny glen a spectral appearance. The man himself was kneeling next to a patch of herbs, of which there were several of varied sorts throughout the small enclosure. He held his light source at a distance, hovering above the fingertips of his right hand. In the other he barely balanced a massive tome. Both hands were covered with brown leather gloves.

“Leonard,” Visla called to him.

The flaming sphere floated higher into the air, leaving his grasp and hovering freely in the center of the cage of limbs. The mage snapped his book closed and dropped it into a massive pouch fastened to his belt. He turned and pushed his spectacles back up to the bridge of his nose.

“How embarrassing for you to see me like his,” he smirked. There were patches of dirt that he brushed from his finely tailored robes, not that Visla would have paid it any mind. “Couldn’t wait to see me, hm?”

“The other way around, you ensorcelled my horse,” Visla guessed from behind a feigned certainty.

“So, you aren’t a fool, then. Why are you intent on dying a fool’s death as a demon’s thrall?” he postured for a minute, but since Visla gave no quick reply, he knelt back down and cut a handful of some leafy herb and stuffed it into another one of his belt’s pouches. With still no answer, he took the knife he used and presented it to the silent warlock. “I forgot to return it to you. I’m quite done with it now.”

She took it and slipped it back on her own belt. She wanted to shout at him again, but found little satisfaction or sense in it. In the end she settled on a question, just as the alchemist seemed ready to be on his way.

“What if I don’t want to be her thrall or her master?”

“I’m delighted you asked,” the man grinned and retrieved his book with an artful flourish.

[Visla Eraclaire]

Visla knocked on the door to Elenore’s house for the fifth time before trying the knob and finding it open. She pushed her way in cautiously and looked around for some sign of the woman she sought. The sweet scent of tea still wafted in from the kitchen, but it was warm and fresh, not the same pot that had awoken her hours before. Embers were dying in the fireplace but their heat still lingered in the air. There was a single light from the upper story visible from the base of the staircase.

It was from a room Visla had never been in and she could hear a muffled tinny sound from within. As she hobbled up the stairs, she could make it out as music, a few somber notes played from a harpsichord. As she pushed the door open, she found the room fully furnished, dusted and well-kept but sterile. The bedsheets were too crisp and the coat that hung by the door was stiff and unworn. Elenore sat on the floor by the window, huddled over a small keyboard, too small in fact to house any strings.

“Elenore, I’m sorry to—“

Before she could finish the sentence the woman shot up from the floor to her full height, still only slightly more than Visla’s own. Her face was wet and it contorted between different emotions, rage, shame, fear, before settling on despair. Her lips mouthed words but no sound came.

“I… I’ll find my own way,” Visla hesitated, unsure what else to do. She had never seen such weakness from the sharp-tongued leader of Uiria and it almost broke her heart to see the strong woman with tear-stained cheeks.

“Wait,” Elenore managed to say as Visla moved toward the door. She didn’t manage anything more, but the warlock obeyed, standing awkwardly in the doorframe, awaiting further instructions.

Visla could think of no suitably subtle words. Finally the silence forced a blunt question from her, “What were you playing?”

Elenore swallowed hard.

“It was… unusual,” Visla said with tactless honesty.

“His favorite song,” Elenore answered, finally seeming to gain a measure of her usual composure. She took up the keyboard under one arm and snatched a teacup from the window sill. “Let’s go downstairs.”

Visla let the woman push her way by and followed her down the stairs. She didn’t ask who she meant. She could guess, but that wouldn’t do either. Elenore’s mother had died in the years since Visla first came to the town. She could only surmise that the crass-faced man in the portrait that hung over the fireplace was the object of her devotion. A wave of guilt filled her for a moment that she did not mourn her own father so powerfully. He died as part of a story, far away and unseen. His absence had been felt more strongly long before he died and so the final word was more of a relief. She wondered how Elenore had lost her father, but dared not ask. When they reached the living room, Visla was presented with a cup of tea and not a word of conversation until she was halfway through drinking it.

“Tonight is the anniversary of his death. It’s one of many reasons I wanted you gone,” Elenore said with an uncharacteristic coldness. From the dour looked in his eyes as he stared down from the portrait, Visla wondered if she wasn’t channeling her late father. “He made me the compact harpsichord. The tea was his favorite. What else do you want to know?”

“Nothing,” Visla insisted, having somehow failed to keep from intruding without even opening her mouth. Her eyes asked all the questions as she stared at Elenore cradling the teacup in her hand.

“He survived dozens of wars, the fall of an empire, the end of our race, only to die trembling in the night from a failing heart,” she muttered with reverence and disgust all at once. “He tried to hold us all so tightly, but that steely grip failed in the end. ‘Goodbye to my wife, thank you to my daughter, and to my son, congratulations.’”

The words echoed in the silence of the house as she mimicked a stern voice even to the last breath. She finished her teacup as Visla pondered silently. The wife and son were gone now as well, she realized. Elenore was alone and more than anything Visla wanted to embrace her, but she sat still in her chair and finished her own tea.

“There was no poison in his cup, but it was a suicide in the end, and we were all accomplices. Even mother fought him, day after day. We argued over the pettiest things until there was no fight left in him. As I looked out the window tonight, back at the city, I wondered if I might soon find myself buried next to him. Uiria is the only family I have left and I cannot let go of her.”

Visla clutched her chest and felt another wave of nausea. She nearly fell from her seat and only the clatter of the teacup against its saucer snapped Elenore out of her monologue. She rushed over and steadied the younger woman’s hand, more out of concern for her china than anything else. When she shaking subsided, Visla’s face was paler than ever.

“I need directions to your library,” Visla managed to say as she held back surges of pain.

“Which one?” Elenore quipped, seeming more of herself.

“Arcane.”