The Cottage by the Bluff

[Sighter Tnailog]

He had not really expected it to work as it had. The Canticle of the Fire Sphere normally produced an entire sphere, and the Requiem of the North produced much bigger ice blasts. But he hadn't the time to do either, so this had to do. As soon as he had unleashed the blast, he felt remorse. He had seen the soldiery in Salvar on drills during one of his many incognito trips to Knife's Edge, and they had a weapon called a musket. They were clunky and unwieldy, but he realized now that they had given them the idea for what he had just done. It was easier to make smaller projectiles, and use the explosive force of another spell to direct them in a burst. It was easy.

And it was wrong. There was nothing different between what he had unleashed on the man and the gun that had been pointed at his chest. As Ainalindil ground to the side, deflected by the gunblade, Findelfin watched as the ice particles ripped into the man's flesh, tore his arm apart, other pellets ripping deep into Jensen's softer internal parts. Instinctively, Findelfin dropped his sword and rushed to the man's side. Enemy or know, he would die without his help.

He began to sing a soft, lilting melody, holding his hand up and feeling the energy gather there. Lissilin was something he had not been excellent at, but all of his arts had increased in power under the tutelage of the bards in the Warded Wood. He closed his eyes for a second to gather his compusure and generate the compassionate sympathy needed to knit torn tissues together. With a flourish he brought his hand down to place upon the man, conveying all that healing into his wounded body. It would be just enough to keep him alive, and as Findelfin's hand reached for the man's shoulder the elf opened his eyes.

And was shocked to see the man looking directly at him, already halfway to his feet, a dagger flashing for Findelfin's side. Findelfin threw himself backwards, but the dagger still managed to plunge deep, penetrating through the side of the leather lamellar where the scales did not fully overlap and tearing a hole in the armor with a slash. Eyes wide, Findelfin quickly modulated the song and ripped out the dagger as he scuttled backwards, then laid the magic upon himself. The wound closed over, though not quickly and not fully; it still oozed and there was a tingling and an faintness in Findelfin's head that wasn't there before. There had been something on that dagger.

Snatching at Ainalindil, Findelfin spat a curse under his breath. This man had been dead! Death could not be faked that well. Was this some necromancer's trick? Findelfin rose to his knees with his back against the wall and the windowsill right above his head. "What are you?" He spat the words with disgust in his voice. "Some lieutenant of Xem'Zûnd's? Or something lesser, some half-bred former devil's trap sent here to snuff out a potential threat to a fool's fiefdom in the hinterlands of my homeland?"

Findelfin was gathering his strength, and clearing his head. That dagger wound was still throbbing, and he suspected he would need to tend to it more fully soon lest it overtake him. But his willpower was at least winning out for the moment over the mental haze of whatever had drugged him. He rose to his feet and extended Ainalindil in front of him, taking a battle position. The man was grinning like an idiot, or a demon. But he had paused, for a second. Listening. Maybe a speech could hold him off, give Findelfin time to regroup. It was worth a shot.

"I am done fighting wars for the elves. I am done with it. We struggled and we lost, and I will never overcome the grief of watching the people I knew die, people I'd loved, both my people and others. The face of Natamrael Nito still haunts me, and her daughter Skie. The daughter of two of my fastest friends, dead as far as I know. Or worse, wandering through the streets of Eluriand as a shambling carcass, wandering until she finds some flesh to rend or falls apart of corpse-rot. Dead because of my failure. Why have you come, if servant of Xem'Zûnd you are? Have you not already triumphed? Will you not leave me broken and alone, to mourn the ones I lost?"

He was standing now, standing firmer. The chance to breathe had renewed him. It seemed that the spell he had cast was having a greater effect than it should have; maybe he had lucked out on the poison, perhaps it was something his magic was already primed to heal. Wobbly, but unbroken, Findelfin stood with his sword stretched out, his back to the wall, his piece spoken, his life displayed for a strange man to try to destroy at the end. Maybe if he died here, it would be okay.

[Enigmatic Immortal]

Jensen observed the Elf retreating and stumbling to the wall, broken words from a broken man uttered in testaments of a tired soul. Here he stood, once more with all his strength crying out his tragedy waiting for Jensen to finish him off. It was when he finished, weapon in hand, prepared to give his life for his sins that it struck the immortal.

His giggling faded and his blood slowed. The knight looked down to the floor where blood had spilt and followed the trail around the cottage. The signs were obvious now to Jensen. Inside was a simple bed with little in the way of trinkets or worldly possessions to furnish the home. His gaze lifted to Findelfin’s looking past the man’s green orbs that dazed back to the immortal. He focused on them, passing the imaginary veil that hid the true warrior within. The foundations of his soul were already crumbled and weak, filled with strife and personal regret.

Jensen dropped his weapons on the floor. They clattered as they collapsed against one another and the knight took a step backwards as if disgusted by what he saw. If anyone in the world knew a thing or two about mourning lost ones. Instead, Jensen just looked to the elf and took a deep breath.

“No, I’m no servant of Xem’Xund,” Jensen started. “And no, I’m no devil’s apparition. Just a cursed plaything of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” the knight looked to Findelfin, seeing the elf keep his guard up, but his breathing softened. He continued, speaking softer as the adrenaline in his blood calmed itself. “And why I am here is because the world needs men like you. Generals who know what loss is like and don’t commit themselves to wars and send people to die for their own glory.”

Jensen stood taller again, his hands in plain sight as he spoke with a bit more pride. “I am Jensen Ambrose, Captain of the Ixian Knights. I serve Kyla Orlouge and was tasked with bringing you to her to discuss the possibility of you joining our cause.” The immortal’s shoulders sagged. “Something I feel I just blew. No words can really take back what I have done, but…we have been under a lot of stress from outsiders attacking our people and betraying us.”

To show his intentions were genuine, Jensen did the only thing he could think of and disarmed himself of all his weapons and tossing them into a pile on the floor. He hoped his gesture would allow Findelfin the confidence to at least give Jensen a chance. But it was all up to the warrior now.

[Sighter Tnailog]

((I took a big risk with your character in something I did here, because...well, because it felt right to me and you weren't around to ask while I was needing to finish the post. If anything in this post upsets you, please let me know and I will edit it immediately.))

Empathy.

For the first time in his life, he resented the gift. Since he had studied with Endarlin, since he had learned to unlock the secret parts of Turlindalë that let him access the emotions of others, he had thought the gift uniformly useful. To know when a foe might be lying and to feel in his own skull when a lover's touch was genuine; these things were truly gifts of the stars. They heightened the pleasures of living, they helped him know when to speak and when to fall silent, they gave him an advantage in a fierce fight. The gift had probably saved his life this very day. Without it, he would have had a dagger in his heart.

But now he could feel his opponent. He could feel this man who had entered his home and his solace, the man who had pushed him to rage, the man had made him unmask and dredge up all he had tried to avoid. Without the gift, Findelfin would have been justified in taking up his sword and slicing through the man's neck, taking his life in an instant. He could always say he had been lied to once already, and had no reason to believe the man this time. He could go the rest of his life assured that he had slain a knave instead of murdered an innocent.

But his empathy meant he could feel his opponent. The rage and the hatred and the bitter, strange mirth that had filled the man while they fought had drained out of him like sand through the sifter's pan. He was empty, and full of regret. It was sad to behold and sadder to feel, and Findelfin was suddenly overwhelmed. With something like pity. This was no man who could disguise himself, who could hide his passions. And those who could not hide their passions could not control them, either. There were wounds in this strange man, this man who could arise from death, that Findelfin might never touch.

Ainalindil clattered to the floor, and Findelfin staggered to a chair, clutching his wounded side. It would heal. Something about that poison was not strong enough to resist even the simple and hurried spell Findelfin had laid upon it, for which he was glad. It was easy enough to heal your body, but the cost was always greater in your soul. Another lesson he'd learned from Endarlin. He gestured to the other chair, and the man took it, albeit hesitatingly.

Gently, carefully, Findelfin pulled out a rosary from his pocket, wrapping it around one hand. He then reached out with both hands to grasp the other man's face in them, with tenderness and care. He paused for a moment to make sure the man was comfortable with the gesture, and could sense the briefest glimmer of something in the man pushing back. Disgust, perhaps? Hatred? But the man was hesitant for only a moment, then relented, nodding and letting the elf place his hands upon his face. He touched the skin tenderly, and looked into the man's eyes for a moment, before closing his own and beginning to sing.

It was the most powerful magic he had ever woven, in a way. Powerful precisely because it did almost nothing. Powerful in the way that sometimes the things which do the absolute least mean the most. A fresco laid against a bare wall in a chapel might have the grace and artistry to move the hearts of men to great things, just as a single statue of surpassing beauty might make the mightiest gasp and stagger at the marvel laid before them. These arts were the greatest magic, and the song Findelfin wove was like to them. A listener trained in the music of Raiaera would have said the song was of Lissilin, that Findelfin was somehow using that art on the man.

They would be wrong. Findelfin had learned that the style of the song did not matter. It had never mattered. Intent and the hope and the concentration and the emotions of the singer were the only thing that had ever fueled Raiaeran song magic, that and the power of the soul doing the the singing. Dagorlin was a percussive, angry music because it was so often sung by angry, violent people. Lissilin was soft and soothing because those who used it most often sought to be soothing presences themselves. But he had once grasped the head of a friend in his hands, a shattered skull, and sang a song of healing with all the force and violence he could muster, as if to wrest back the dead from the very gates of Galatirion. He had once spoken a Dagorlin incantation so softly and gently that his enemy had barely felt the ice blade penetrate his chest. No, the sound of the music had never mattered. What mattered was the soul of the singer.

So this song was of no school and of all. No school because its music was simple, a song of relief, a song of hope, a song of simple beauty and unadorned melody. A song for the end of battle. But in it he laid the hopes of Turlin, to probe and to seek out. Into it he wove Lissilin, to heal the body, and what he knew of Aglarlin to soothe the mind. He wove Dagorlin, to do battle with the demons in the man, and Ostlin to defend him from their wiles; he wove in Ainalin, to convey the sanctity of the moment, the holiness of tender touch and forgiving grace. And at last he wove Endarlin, the music that had been forbidden for too long, extending his own soul into the man. He wanted to touch him, to find the part of him that was wounded, to pierce the mirth in his heart. It was not a flashy magic.

There in the man's heart Findelfin felt a wound deeply familiar and yet deeply foreign. With time he could conceivably heal it. Time and more skill than he had. Elves lived long lives, but they could perish. Findelfin had picked this location by the Bluff for that reason. If the wounds of all the ones he had lost ever became too much, he could walk down to the stream as though on his normal water-gathering errand. He could stare out across the expanse of rocky coast towards the sea, glimmering faintly a few miles away, occasionally wafting its salty breath across his face. And he could fling himself from that bluff into the stream below, and let it wash his broken form out to the sea. It was something he had pondered, and never done, something he probably never do. But knowing he could do it had been...a comfort. It had made the life he was bound to live, the life of a near-immortal elf, bearable. How this man could bear an immortality without escape was beyond him. It made him quake with the hurt of such profound injustice.

Even if Findelfin possessed the skill to heal this man's wound, it would be a violation, for it would change who he was. It would wrap up his existence in a new way, and that was not Findelfin's decision to make. That wound was no longer fresh; it was a scar, constantly broken and healed over so much it had become a knot. Findelfin dared not touch it lest it rip open. But he could do something. He placed on its surface a small glamor, the smallest, faintest light. All the magic he had poured into this exploration of the man settled there. It would leave the barest imprint, the barest sense that things might be different. Only Jensen could find it, and the man might never know he had been touched by it unless he sought out the meaning of the moment for himself.

Meaning. Findelfin pondered. For oneself. A powerful magic indeed.

Findelfin stopped his song then reached across the table. He knew not to say anything else, for the man would still be pondering what had just happened. And, to be honest, Findelfin didn't want to explain what he had done, because he didn't rightly know. He'd placed hope, perhaps, in a breast where hope had been long covered over by violence. In his silence he grabbed a tiny notebook, covered over many pages with his thin, legible hand. Tearing out a page at the back -- half a page, really, paper was expensive these days -- he shoved the parchment and a single Alerian fountain pen towards the man.

"Write down your piece. Where I may find the Knights, why I should find them. The Orlouge name is not unknown to me, and I will consider your request. No promises. Once you are done, gather your weapons. I need space to think. You are forgiven, for what it's worth, but I wouldn't test the limits of my patience."

Getting up, he left the man to write, and stepped out of the cottage. The sun was sinking, and the stars were coming up. Good. Findelfin thought. Now's as good a time as any to pray. Clutching his rosary in his hands, he extended his arms to the heavens. Tonight, of all nights, he needed the star-gods to listen.