The Restless Fugitive (Closed)

[Duffy]

Part Four
One Year Ago

In recent months, Duffy Bracken had grown increasingly tired, weary, and destitute. He was tired enough to not just feel the ache in his muscles, bones, and sinew, but in his soul as well. Down in the depths of his being, he felt like sleeping for a thousand years. Fighting took a great deal out of even the hardiest of men, but even the grizzled soldiers of Althanas’ darkest frontiers got an opportunity to rest. There would be no mud-sewn camp for the Tantalum, now that war had come to the land of Raiaera.

“There is nothing to see…,” he whispered. He felt their dithering gaze on his back.

With a puckered, sour expression, he stared out across the darkened plains from behind the sanctuary of the Tor’s ruined battlements. Long ago, the University’s uppermost spire would have been a gleaming needle set against a radiant horizon. After dark elven rebellion, necromantic tyranny, and civil war, all the splendour of Istien had drained away. The glory of the High Elves was lost, and it would be decades, centuries, or perhaps millennia before the Cor Lindra could once again be proud to rule over her homelands.

“What do you see, Lord Defoe?” said the high bard singer, with soft tone and heartfelt intent. Her shimmering spider silk, satin, and golden robes caught the last raiment’s of the sun for a brief moment before darkness washed over the kingdom. Their enchantment only made them more mesmerising than her natural beauty did – she was like a sun in cloth, bound by vestments. In another life, Duffy might have found her attractive.

Duffy turned slowly, as if he were trying to buy himself crucial seconds. He shifted his weight cantankerously on his cane, so that he could right himself without falling. He remained pensive for a few long seconds before he spoke, inertia and weakness causing him to close his eyes to steel himself against the dark. He opened them slowly, and looked to his colleague. He ignored Ruby’s glare from behind the high elf, and remained poised enough to deliver his judgement with conviction.

“Nothing of note,” he said.

“You can see nothing at all?” said the Cor Lindra, her words venomous with surprise. Duffy heard just a hint of disappointment in her tone. He quite understood how she felt. He wanted validation in their endeavour, and more so, he wanted to hear that they were fighting for a cause truly worth the cost.

“I can see nothing except the obvious. We are witnessing the formation of a new, undesired reality. I have expected its arrival for some time now.” The flecks of spit began to whiten on Duffy’s lips. The atmosphere, cold, and the long and tiring hours spent immersed in rhetoric were beginning to get to his stamina.

“If it is expected,” the bard said, bemoaning having to admit defeat, “then what of the rifts we have been encountering?”

“I am afraid to say, Nalith, that the vortexes are becoming more frequent.” By his count, and the multitude of silver skeins on the horizon, they were becoming too frequent for the raiding parties to continue to seal. If they pressed themselves too hard, then they would render Raiaera’s already weakened defences against its encroaching enemies useless. “We can continue as we are and focus our efforts on the disruptions that form near villages, towns, and our borders…,” he curled his lip, “but I am afraid that unless we do something more,” he sighed, “forceful, we will be overwhelmed by their frequency before too long.”

“How long is too long?”

“We have weeks, perhaps months at best.”

The high elf began to reply, but Ruby, with boisterous ignorance, stole the words right out of her mouth. She stepped forwards as she interrupted, clicking out the sound of her advance with a triple flourish of steel tipped heels against ancient granite. Like Duffy, the spell singer was growing tired, weary, and wanderlust with the trials and errors of high elven politics. She wanted action, and as ever, she wanted it quicker than it would come.

[Duffy]

“So what do we do about them?”

Duffy rolled his eyes. “I am afraid there is only way we can repair the damage caused to The Aria. You will not like it,” he turned back to gaze out over the rolling copses, maudlin’ swamps, and decadent bogs. “You will not like it one bit.” He left the recipient of his reply deliberately vague, and relished the rising tension, which grew even as the wind began to howl over their shoulders in a stream of violent, ghastly noise. He rested his hand onto the lower battlement to steady himself.

“You mistake me for someone who has not spent five centuries in your delectable company, Duffy.” Ruby sniped. Nalith raised an eyebrow in response, but decided against questioning what she meant. “Just tell us, we are running out of time.”

The bard could not help but agree with her. Ever since the distortions had started to appear all across the elven heartlands, the impending sense of doom had become fever pitch. With each vortex, a tick of the proverbial doom clock had pressed the remnants of Istien University’s Bladesinger garrison into action. With each tick, a patrol came back from the bogs and the borderlands, and the undead thrived on their own in the face of a greater enemy.

“We have to offer each tear an immortal.”

Ruby, Nalith, and Duffy alike all blinked once, hard, and with purpose. The sky clapped with lighting, and the thunder rolled down across the moistened kingdom. Dew, rain, and mist pulsed.

“I am sorry?” Nalith asked, her spider-silk gown shimmering as she flinched. “You want us to offer sacrifices to your mistake?” her lip curled, most unbecoming for an elf of her stature, and she folded her arms tightly across her chest. “I will not condone this, not one bit.”

“You have no choice, Nalith.” Duffy said, forgetting his place, and the etiquette of their host’s long standing tradition. “Now is not the time for titles and trifles to stand in the way of what must be done.” The bard turned a flurry of dusty cloth and heavily frayed war garb, “I daresay that sentiment rings true with you my liege, if the history of the war rings true.” Returning to form, Duffy plied his study of the university’s account of the Corpse War to his cause.

A second peal of thunder sundered the sky. Vermillion, blue, and azure flourishes spiralled out from the impact, until the skies over Raiera returned to their drab, lifeless, and phantasmal normality. The wind strengthened, whipped over the battlements, then died again as it tumbled down onto the shattered raiment’s of Istien University’s crumbling spires. The moan and groan of the tense atmosphere echoed as if spiritual tendrils through the once glorious collegiate of the art of spell song.

“That was different, Brandybuck.” Nalith replied with sour contempt. “We were fighting an enemy we did not understand, and an enemy we had spent many centuries fearing in our nightmares.” Her eyes narrowed and pierced his forehead. Ruby rolled her eyes, tapped the forefront of her right foot onto the cracked stone, and mimicked the elf's closed stance.

“That is no different to now, Nalith. There are fifteen rifts out there, right now, and more will come if we do not act fast. The tears in the fabric of Althanas are due to my mistake, yes, but they are everyone’s burden to bear.”

“Are they, Duffy?” Ruby stepped closer, let her arms drop to her sides, and then clicked her fingers. The air smouldered around her digits, and her voice seemed to take a deeper, stronger, and more prominent tone. Magic clung to the air, despite the rain, and pushed almond scent into the group’s nostrils. It served as a stern and poignant warning to them both against any further incivility.

“You refused to help when we called on you, and because of that, Tantalus was destroyed.” Duffy, for the first time in his life, narrowed his gaze into a glare of contempt that could have exorcized dark souls. Nalith took it well, but realised her mistake.

“Look around, Brandybuck.” Ruby waved her arms, and Duffy flinched at the use of his real name by his matriarch and closest friend. “We are at the heart of Althanas’ death throe. Now is not the time to be pointing the fucking finger!” her arms slapped against her laced thighs, fingers dancing and eyes blazing with literal flame.

[Duffy]

“Do you not think I know that?” his voice rose in intensity, but he turned away, rested his hands against the battlements, and stared out into the drab nothingness of the landscape. “I have spe-” he sighed, “we have spent five centuries giving up everything for the betterment of others. We have protected Althanas against its enemies each and every waking moment.”

“A sacrifice that will be remembered, without a doubt,” the elf said, softly, as if to lace the argument with kindness. She pressed her fingers together, and rested her chin on her index digits in contemplation. Her own nostrils flared with heavy breaths, a composing mantra to steel herself against the tension in the air.

“I would not have come here, Nalith, if it were not the only way. When Jensen and Erissa returned, I was just as shocked as you were to hear of what they had found.” What they had found, in the depths of madness, was the final piece of an intricate, deadly, and almost unfathomable puzzle. “If the four Forgotten Ones have been truly bested, then now, in this day and age, will be the time for the Fifth to make himself remembered.” Neither elf nor avatar wished to witness such an event.

“I am yet to pass judgement on the implications of Oblivion’s supposed passing.” She threw away her mantra, and returned to a glare of scorn. “The Fifth, however, will be greeted with the entire wrath our people possess. He is, after all, much to blame for Raiaera’s devastation, and for the passing of the Maya from this world.” The uttering of the Ancient’s name brought a smile to Duffy’s face.

“Then you have not forgotten why it is important for allegiances to be formed, and for allegiances to be upheld in times dire to the survival of the free peoples?” he raised an eyebrow, flicked his mop of a fringe from his eyes, and cast away his cane in a flourish of mercury strands of light and ochre energy. The smell of lemons filled the ornate chamber.

“But who will be wiped from the chronicles this time, might I ask?”

“I will,” he said. His determination, his unflinching nature, and the look of shock on Ruby’s face told Nalith all she needed to know about the truth of the bard’s appearance at her door. He had planned this, perhaps for centuries, and if he had gone to such lengths to offer himself for the good of her people, he deserved to speak.

She rose, ascendant and resplendent, and gestured with a slender arm to the opening in the northern curve of the tower’s wall. “You mean to offer yourself to the tears?” she enquired, moving over the floor without so much as a sound. Her skippered feet seemed to hover above the glimmering surface of the Elvin stone. Her horns, coiled with ivy, elongated as the air hummed with power. “You are but one soul, my Lord,” she used titles to incite pride, “when the tears are many.”

Together, the trio walked to the doorway, and stepped out onto the balcony. Almost immediately, the howling wind broke the silence, and the concentration, and battered them with the iron scented gale that carried with it stories of distant wars. The horizon was by now blood red, swirling with orange, yellow, and purple undertones. Nalith, in a moment of magnificent power, spread her arms and did away with nature’s advance. The air around the balcony froze for a split second. Duffy felt his breath leave him, and Ruby started to swoon.

“Who else do you propose?” her follow up question ended her spell, leaving her audience gasping, and the balcony calm, serene, and sheltered from the elements. A dome of rainbow glass solidified around the northern point of the university, encompassing all the grounds and colleges in its expanse. Nalith, or so it seemed, had called on the inner strength of the Bardic school as a whole, and not merely on her own power.

“I...,” Ruby wheezed.

“I can name only three others who have the power within to seal the cracks we discovered over the ebb and flow of the reforming Tap.” The names floated to the forefront of his mind. The guilt that followed echoed his reservation to speak them.

[Duffy]

“The second is Jensen Ambrose.” Nalith nodded. She had heard of the enigmatic immortal through the Tor Melinda, and the swan mounting sky knights of the northern provinces of Raiaera. They had carried words of his deeds far over the Elvin heartlands, and much farther beyond into the Mountains of Twilight, and the lands of Alerar. “The third,” Duffy paused for a moment, to catch Ruby’s gaze. She frowned, “Is of course Ruby Winchester, the Old God once named Phoenix.”

“A fact you will eternally remind me of,” she snapped. Her tongue protruded, for just a split second, to show her contempt with a flourish of immaturity. She had immediately suspected she would be amongst the ‘brave few’.

“I fear Lilith and Arden will be required elsewhere, so whilst they are appropriate, we cannot sacrifice them.” Duffy rested his hands on his hips. “That leaves yourself, Nalith, and the final person that would serve as a conduit...” He hesitated upon seeing the high elf’s reaction. Her serenity fell away from her, and rose back up around her spider silk form like demon’s fire.

“I will do no such thing!” she roared. The dome cracked in places, as if the peace of its wielder was a crucial component to its machination. “Raiaera will not stand to lose its leader in a time of war...”

“In losing its leader, it will gain something else much more potent for its recovery...” Even Ruby was speechless, she began to step from toe to toe, her form dancing with the last dying light of the setting sun.

“The dancing fool, the bard, and the spell singer are sacrifices.” She spat. “The Cor Lindra will not be a tool for your heroism to be gifted with immortality!”

“Everything and everyone is expendable, when the survival of the world is at stake!” Duffy had not intended to lose his composure, but he roared so loud that not even the gathering storm could have drowned him out. His eyes blazed, his jacket became enflamed, and ribbons of blue light danced out from his outstretched palms.

“An honourable position,” Nalith began, stepping back once, “when you give people the opportunity to volunteer.” She sighed. “There has to be another way, we cannot throw ourselves into the abyss and hope, pray, and prattle that somehow, Althanas will carry on in our absence.”

“You speak as if we’re gods, Nalith.” Ruby interjected, stepping up to Duffy’s side to press her hand on his shoulder. She could feel the tension in his muscles, which knotted them into steel, and felt afraid for their success rate. If she did not take a firm grip on his temperament, Duffy could destroy any hope they had of forming an alliance with Istien. If they did not have that, then they would have to fight the final Forgotten One alone. She shuddered at the thought. “We are pawns, and this game of chess has gone on for too long already.”

“Even if,” she side-tracked, “and this is a small if,” she folded her arms across her chest, “we manage to seal the rights, what guarantee is there they will not simply reform?”

“The Tap is reforming because of our stupidity,” Ruby replied. By our, she of course meant her husband’s, but as they had pledged to be and do as one until death did them part, it was her burden to carry too, “we have made certain we will correct that mistake.” The research had carried them everywhere, to ancient citadels and giant homesteads and they had conversed with the gods themselves in their endeavour.

“It has only been able to break through the seals placed upon it by your ancestors because the Forgotten Ones remained on Althanas. Now that, slowly but surely, they have all but been defeated, the power of the Tap is dwindling. It will be too weak to return, once we destroy the vials and eradicate the final skeins of power of its wielders.” Xem’Zund, Pode, and Denebriel had been defeated. Each was demolished, undone, contained. The Fourth and Fifth remained, and remained the only obstacle.

“A world without the Tap...,” Nalith whispered. Her eyes glazed over, as if the pleasure of such a realm had consumed her. It was a distant dream of the elves, to be free of their ancient enemy. To think that it was a possibility began to gnaw away at her reluctance to offer herself to the cause.

[Duffy]

“Before we can seal the rifts, though, there remains one other task we must tend to...” Speaking perhaps too soon of his graver news, Duffy clenched his teeth. The oppression that rose up from the pit of his stomach roiled his acid, dissolved his lunch, and gave him a shake that he could not hope to sweat out. “We must find, and kill, the last of the Forgotten Ones.”

The storm broke through the sphere on the eastern side of the university. The sound of the wind piercing through the crack seemed almost calamitous over the backdrop of silence. They all turned to gaze into the distance, and watched fragments of soul glass break away, crumble, and rain down onto the School of Healing below.

“We have not been able to discern his resting place, even with the might of our remaining armies...even with the clarity of foresight of The Starlight Wanderers.” Nalith’s tone seemed hopeless, ill thought out, and without hope of recovery. She had spent months spending every waking moment in pursuit of their Final enemy. When Jensen and Erissa Caedron had reported the death of Pode, and when they did battle with another adversary, each new victory gave her life. “He is beyond reach, and out of reach, he is immortal truly.”

Duffy broke into a maddened smile, as if his work to guide their conversation had finally come to fruition.

“You’re looking at him,” he said, pointing at Ruby. In turn, realising her cue, she pointed back.

“You’re looking at us.”

“What?” Nalith said.

The legacy of Lucian Lahore had scarred Duffy Bracken for life. The Dark Bard’s campaign to destroy the heart and soul of Scara Brae had consumed the troupe’s attentions for nearly a century. Each turn and twist in the story had killed, severed, and devastated the bard’s emotions, personality, and his resolve to remain focussed and concentrated on the task. When he had finally bested Lucian, he had thought, perhaps naively, that their troubles would end.

“We are fragments of the Fifth Forgotten One.” From his snake like lips, and with too great a smile, it seemed as if he were making a threat. Ruby nodded in agreement with his statement. “Five shards in all, we are toys and puppets of his power.”

“Explain yourselves, now, before I cast you to the depths!” she pursed her lips, bent her knees, and spread her arms into a defensive stance. Duffy and Ruby both recognised it as belonging to the Turlin School – the only song in the School of Healing that could hurt them was Althorn – the song of piercing light.

“Stop, stop, and stop!” the spell singer pleaded, the hem of her dress rippled as she made a cautious step back. She held up hands in defence, a feeble wall that would afford no protection against Nalith’s pure and unhindered voice.

“Stop to let you destroy me?” she spat.

“Listen to us; do not make the same mistake others have done.”

“When his siblings were defeated in the first War of the Tap, Nalith, the Fifth Forgotten one wove spells of forgetting into the skeins of history. People, quite simply, forgot his name. No matter how hard they tried, they could not find a way to remember it, and even if they did, the magic would re-write history and do away with that small hope of victory once more.” He had garnered the nickname Oblivion, amongst the Immortals, for that small feat alone.

“Oblivion...,” she said. “The one the immortal seeks?” she raised an eyebrow, which was un-elf like, but showed interest. “That seems...implausible.”

“Truth in plain sight has always been his way.” Ruby nodded remorsefully. “In his exile, he took on the mantle of Wainwright Jones, using his still potent abilities and charisma to gather pawns and peons to his side.” That charisma had formed the Tantalum troupe, five hundred years ago or more, and solidified the sage of Duffy, Ruby, Lilith, and Arden. “He stole the power of the Thayne Tantalus, shattered the gods’ corpse, and used the vessels that contained his essence to form five beings that would be immortal props to his sycophantic need to control, to dominate, and to tyrannise.”

Nalith, piecing together the facts, stood down. “You...,” she said.

[Duffy]

Duffy nodded, “he made us, and divided the art of creation amongst the troupe. He made us immortal, so that we would never be lost or used against him. He used the magic he had learnt from the Tap to erase our memories whenever we gained the prescience to remember the truth, and he reformed us in his image when we died...” Each resurrection had been rebirth into another character from his endless creativity. They had lived out the lives the Forgotten One had been denied.

“Then if he is to be defeated, you must perish, no?” the question was posed seemed cruel. Duffy could not deny her the right to ask it, though.

“Yes, or at least, that’s what we always believed.” Ruby stepped closer. “When I came to the university, it was to unseal a book that he had written, a precognitive glimmer of the future as we live it now. In it, he revealed that once we remember, and learn to hold on to the memory and the truth of our creation, his power over us is forever broken.”

A crack of thunder struck the dome, just as the last of the sunset faded from view. As darkness overwhelmed the kingdom, revelation overwhelmed its people.

“We know where he is, and we know that has begun to act in the light of his brother’s death.” Duffy had seen Wainwright only a year prior, when the Forgotten One had delivered the fatal blow, crippled him, and destroyed the Prima Vista, the troupe’s home. “He will surely seek to reclaim the vials, before we can destroy them for good. I do not, I hope, have to tell you what would happen if any of the Forgotten Ones consume the power and spirit of another?” the warning in his question was clear enough.

If Oblivion drank from the vials, if he consumed Xem’Zund’s necromantic essence or the red forest witches’ heart...then the Tap would be the least of their worries.

It took a great deal of time before Nalith calmed down, composed her thoughts, and replied. Her face was whiter, as if the life had drained from her cheeks, and though the storm was growing within the dome, the sound of her heart beating was almost audible over the increasing roar. She ran her hands along the curvature of her horns, clicked her neck, and spoke.

“No, you do not. That does not mean to say that I entrust you with my life.” The sincerity of her words humbled Duffy. The anger he felt subsided, and he folded his arms behind his back, subtlety appreciative of her authority. “You still have not told me much about what you intend to do…” The accusation undid his resolve. She gestured, with flowing trails shining in her motion’s wake, back towards the archway that lead into the audience chamber. “So I expect you to be more…,” she began to walk, “forthright, Duffy.”

“What do you wish to know?” he asked, following her as she took the lead. With stoic steps, he set his battle-worn boots harshly onto the stone. It, like her dress, danced in the light of twilight. “What would appease you?”

“You say he made you in his image Duffy, so who is the fifth ‘Forgotten One’?”

Duffy immediately sighed. She had gone straight for the jugular, a ripping of the only thing Duffy held truly dear. Ruby caught his glance, but he chose to ignore her fiery concern. They had, centuries ago, made a promise to protect the final member of the Tantalum troupe. For some strange reason, Oblivion’s magic had erased the concern’s memory so thoroughly, that there was no hope of ever being able to awaken him to the truth. They had guarded him, kept him close, and kept him secret. The irony of forgetting him was a constant source of guilt for Ruby, who was like a mother to him.

“Is that crucial to the task at hand?”

“Forthright, Duffy, forthright…,” she said as she glared at him. They entered the chamber, and the sudden rise in temperature was comforting to them all. The wind fell away into nothingness, and the twilight of dusk turned with the flickering illumination of the chamber’s glow stones. “No bars held, no honours broken.”

[Duffy]

“I am sorry, Ruby,” he said, “but I guess Nalith is right…we have protected him for this long, he will remain protected as a matter of,” she looked back at Nalith, who had already made it to her throne, sat, and arranged herself regally, “priority.”

“Whoever it is, they will be treated equally, and brought into the silver wing’s governance.”

“Then spread their wings around Pettigrew Orison.”

The High Bard narrowed her gaze into a piercing, speculative analysis. Once, and only once, she had witnessed a play put on by the Tantalum Troupe. It had been during the high summer, she had travelled to Scara Brae on a diplomatic mission to ascertain wherever or not an allegiance was plausible between the Council and Queen Valeena’s isolationist principality. It had ended without fruit, but she remembered the name, and the face that went with it from the performance.

“The scamp with the tree costume?” she raised an eyebrow. There was more than ample mirth curling her lips into a wry smile. “I find that hard to stomach.” The Fifth of the Forgotten One’s simulacrum was no more than thirteen, and fond of swearing. She guessed there was little certainty when tyrants and gods were concerned.

“It is true enough,” she sighed. There was a hint of a tear in the corner of her right eye. She felt suddenly exonerated, but at the same time, she felt guiltier than ever. “The power he possesses is dormant, sealed away by the same magic that erased our memories. It is…,” she teetered on uneasy feet, “difficult to conceive a way to unleash it.”

“Without hurting him, I assume you mean?” she reached into her robes, produced a small vial, and filled It with silver liquid from the small divining bowl that rested on the right arm of her throne. The skeins of magic within formed its own seal, and a brief flash of light surrounded the elf. “I can see how you would be reluctant to even try.” She understood something about loyalty, family, and protecting them with one’s life. “There are ways and means to undo the magic Oblivion is purported to wield.” Nalith held out the vial, and Duffy, reading the signs, approached her to take it.

“What is this, might I ask?” he said, weighing the vial in his palm. It was warm to the touch, though mercury was oft cold and kept frozen. The glass was roughshod, and the stopper, liquid wax pressed together with melodic potency swirled with colour as he held it up to a glow stone’s light. It was a strange creation, which made Duffy’s mind wander as to how strange the contents would be.

“My next question,” she said, ignoring the bard’s counter enquiry, “is would you be willing to use the very thing that threatens our world to save it?” the soft tone of her voice belied the severity of her question. Duffy took it to mean The Tap, and instantly balked at the idea. His hand dropped to his side, his inspection of the vial insignificant now.

“Never, the Tap would destroy us long before we ever got the chance to use it against him.” He practically scintillated rebellion. Ruby, without having to say anything, folded her arms across her chest, betrayed by her sudden exegesis of form. “How could you even suggest such a thing?” he continued, with obvious shock and disgust.

“You hold in your hand a draught of The Tap.” She pointed an elongated digit at the vial. “A draught of the Tap that is bound, chained, and tempered by a Bardic school outlawed in Raiaera, forbidden in practise except by those trusted few who have proven themselves to be cleansed, pure, and honourable.” Duffy had a hard time picturing anyone capable of such things, even Nalith, whose form shone with the heavens, though whose heart, clearly, showed only black.

“Are you telling me that the Cor Lindra, light of Raiera, would not lay down her sword and life to save the world…but she would, without hesitation, wield the ancient enemy in a bid to safe herself?” he threw the vial back at her. In a moment of weakness and emotion, he undid all his work thus far to garner an alliance. The vial arced upwards, until its weight overpowered Duffy’s long arm. It fell and clattered against the marble mosaic before the High Bard. Duffy watched it roll, unharmed, and over the faces of the heroes called the Dawnbringers.

“We can destroy the Tap, and the Forgotten Ones, and gain levity against Alerar all in one fell swoop,” she snarled. “Raiaera would be great once again!”

[Duffy]

“Is this what this is about?” Ruby’s eyebrow rose, slowly, but with the sort of potency that undid even the strongest man’s reserve. “You are viewing this as some sort of political opportunity?”

“You’re more despicable than he is,” Duffy spat.

“Can you not see how important it is, to gain whatever leverage we can from every opportunity?” the disbelief in Ruby and Duffy’s tone did not mirror the bard. She seemed entirely at home with the notion. “The Tap is merely a tool, one that was misused by the abhorrent people of the First Age.” She sighed. “We have, I daresay, learnt from the long series of mistakes that lead to the war, the suffering, and the solitude of our people through the darker days of civilisation.” Duffy knew she referred to the Daemon Wars, but would not speak that realm’s name.

“Do you truly believe that we have learnt from our mistakes?” his tone suggested incredulity. His arms, waving with emphasis, suggested irate frustration. “Have you looked out beyond the walls of your domain, Nalith?” he pointed through the archway, beyond which the sky was turning to fire. The dome erected to protect the university against the encroaching storm continued to falter, shatter, and tumble to the ground. Nalith remained entirely unpaved by the collapse of her sanctuary. “Have you seen your people suffer, your kingdom crumble, and your last remnants of power dwindle?”

In the recent months, as more and more rifts had opened across Raiaera, more and more cadres of soldiers, blade singers, and civilians had left the ego of their Cor Lindra. The fiercely independent, and until now rare isolationist groups within the hierarchy of the high elves had swelled in number and with good cause. People were whispering of madness in the university, whispers of decay in the once pure and noble colleges. Nalith, at its head, spoke in terms not even Duffy would repeat. Not since Devin’s sword had scoured the realm of the undead, leaving a mountain of corpses, rotten and bitter in its wake had death lingered in the air as strongly as it did now.

“My kingdom is tolerating its hardships,” she held out her palm, and with a radix of power, pulled the vial back into her fingertips with a telekinetic swell. The embrace of her fingers around the glass comforted her, though with lies and subterfuge, not truth and honesty. “They will offer their lives, if I ask it of them.” A menacing aura grew about the elf; one Duffy immediately felt nauseas at, and one, which fettered Ruby’s compassion in chains of anger. She clenched her fists to contain herself. Whatever vision of perfection she had formulated of the Cor Lindra in her study in the university, she was destroying it now, piece by piece, brick by brick.

“If you put…” Duffy swallowed the lump in his throat. Sweat was beading down his brow. “If you put your people in harm’s way, Nalith…” He mimicked Ruby’s clenched fists, used them as a symbol of defiance, and spread his feet wider. Nalith noticed his shift in stance. “Then I will do all in my power to stop you…”

“Again you threaten me, bard.”

“Yet again you assume I am jesting…,” he replied, with equal sternness. “I will not allow you to abuse the people we are offering ourselves to protect. We will give our lives to save.” A final please slipped from his lips. This was the pinprick before the cannon shot. If Nalith ignored it, then not even Duffy’s sense of self could protect him from his coming course of action.

“You will give them now, and at my behest,” she rose, sharply, and with the solidifying sense of wisps and aeons becoming steel and dehlar. A blade appeared from this air, encompassed by blue light, white smoke, and a flourish of sound that pierced the membrane of Duffy’s soul.

Ruby approached Duffy’s side, her heels stringently marking out her pace with sharp clips against cold stone. The temperature continued to drop as the flame about Nalith’s blade turned to ice, and then to glacial crystal, and then to nothingness. The sparkling dust fell away, leaving only the blade itself. She began to smoke, scintillate, and grow in stature. Fire danced in her greying hair, which, for just a brief moment in the wake of each lick, shone bright red and buoyant orange.

“This has gone too far, Cor Lindra!” she screamed, her vocal chords strained by the emotion coursing through her veins. “Stand down, or we will fight with our very being for the greater good.”

Nalith shook her head.

“Then we shall fight…,” Duffy said, plainly, flatly, and without hesitation. He held out his hand, and conjured to his side through a shadow portal the blade that had slain Oblivion the first time. He took it into his left palm, and felt completely again with its power coursing into his fragile body. With Wainwrights’ Edge firmly in his grip and Wainwrights’ Riposte conjured to his right, the Great Bard charged.

[Duffy]

Present Day

“What do you propose to do about it?” Duffy asked. He watched Ruby dribble, literally, over lace and lavender icing and dressing. He foresaw broken glass and a crime spree, and reached out to take her by the shoulder. He pressed his fingers gently onto her dress. “I ask because we cannot just help ourselves in this civilised age.” He ushered her along the street.

She could not help but look back over her shoulder for one last visual taste. When they turned a corner, and the bakery street vanished, her heart sank. She looked ahead, slowed her pace, and began to walk with all the gumption of a broken-hearted minstrel.

“I am not sure if there is anything we can do.” Her moan dragged Duffy’s mood down with it.

“Oh come now,” he pursed his lips, “we can follow through on our blessing at the very least.” When he ran back over what he had said, he mouthed his surprise.

“You seriously expect me to turn up to that opening performance and…,” she half-gasped, and half-coughed, “applause?” She stopped dead in her tracks.

Duffy, given no choice in the matter, and not lacking the strength to run, stopped with her. He looked around desperately, and then realised where they were. His route was quick, by all means, but he did not expect to arrive at their destination so soon.

“I think it is the only course of action to take,” he said stoically. He was not going to let her emotional outburst ruin his day. “Look behind you, before you start spewing flames about the place,” he jabbed a finger over her shoulder. She turned with a snap, and then felt the anger drain away.

What Ruby was looking at was older than the troupe was. It rose up from a corner of an old apartment rise like an abominable snowman. It was terrifying to children. It told of life, death, and tomorrow. It had a small slate roof arching over an ancient clock mechanism. Its three faces, all yellow with age, told three different times. The north face told the time in Corone. The East face told the time in Raiaera. The south face told the time in Scara Brae.

Ruby almost felt like crying. She wheeled about.

“You brought me here on purpose, you oaf!” she roared.

Duffy smiled. He had not meant to come this way. In his urgent need to flee the cake before she had jumped through the glass, he had taken whatever street was near. Beyond, they would join up with the road that lead them home all the same, but he could not help but find it ironic.

“I really didn’t,” he said flatly. It sounded truthful, but Ruby reddened to boiling point. She pointed her finger accusingly. “I was not looking where I was going when I wrenched you free of the whipped cream tyrant.” He furrowed his brow. He did not like her expression. He stepped back, just to make sure. He had taken a boot to the groin enough times to recognise the signs.

[Duffy]

“Do you know what this clock represents?” she asked, as if she were talking to an idiot. Sometimes, Duffy was, but not today. He nodded. “So you will understand why I am on edge…”

The defaced clock once told a fourth time, that of the Tantalum troupe’s next performance. The ornate golden hands had chimed the inner bell an hour before, and an hour after the troupe intended to put on a show. It broke the time Lucian Lahore, their nemesis, had appeared on the day of Lillith Kazumi’s wedding.

“This is where Lillith’s husband was killed,” he said.

“Not to mention where you, three centuries ago, asked me on a date.” She glared. Apparently, her love life was more important than the eternal misery of her sister. “You did it again a hundred years ago. If I recall,” she wrinkled her brow, “you did it another time thirty or so years back…”

Duffy thought to himself for a moment. By now, the sun was starting to cusp the Windlacer Mountains. For an hour or two, it would get cooler. In his current state, sodden with sweat, tired, and half-cut, he did not want to linger in the open for much longer. “

“I guess love, life, and dreams all died here.”

The poignancy of his words cut Ruby’s temper atwain.

“This is not the relaxing afternoon we had planned, is it…,” she sighed.

Duffy shook his head. “I am sorry.”

“Sorry?” she whelped. “What on earth for?”

“I should have been a better leader.” He thought louder, harder, and stronger. He fought to find the words she needed to hear, not the words he wanted to say. He stepped forwards with the click of his cane on cobbles, and stretched his free hand around her, wing-like, to hug. “I should have been more of a brother, and not a love-struck puppy.”

Ruby took his kindness, and smothered herself in it. She buried her face in his sweaty shirt, and took a deep breath of the coarse, woollen fabric smell that lingered in the bard’s wake. He smelt faintly of bourbon, wood smoke, and aftershave.

“You were everything you were meant to be,” she mumbled. Duffy patted her, and stroked her hair, as if a brother should.

“We tried to run from all these memories, Ruby.” They had run for so long he had forgotten what the city looked like. “It was only a matter of time before grief overwhelmed our stoic, cold hearts.” Now, it seemed, was that time. Everywhere they looked; memories came flooding back like a forceful blow that knocked them to their knees.

“What if I don’t want to remember?” she cried. She looked up into his eyes. Hers sparkled with tears. His eyes sparkled with charisma and a sudden need to be strong for others.

“We need to move on, Ruby. To do that, we need to acknowledge our mistakes.”