The Night of Sundered Shackles

[Flames of Hyperion]

Closed, details here (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?27023-The-Night-of-Sundered-Shackles-%28OOC-Recruitment%29).

Through the misty rain the guardsman ran.

Quartered livery of faded teal and sunburst yellow slunk through sheets of falling grey. On his chest he bore the fiery hammer and brandished fist of his esteemed employers. Iron-capped leather boots splashed, messy and muddy into puddles shaped between neglected cobblestones. On another day he might have hesitated to risk his neck upon the worn slippery surface. But the message he carried today preceded any thought for personal safety.

Thoughts of his dishonoured comrades coursed with equal swiftness through his mind. The knowledge that he alone could redeem them gifted his feet the tireless haste of the boreal winds.

Every inhalation fed him the strength of the loamy summer earth, of steaming petrichor and his own sweat. Every exhalation escaped as a plume of vapour into the chilly ceiling of clouds. His body swayed from side to side, exhaustion destroying the rhythm of his pounding legs. Every now and again he cast a fearful glance over his shoulders, as if expecting pursuit. But he was so close now, so close he could almost taste the safety.

The wilds have always held danger for the unwary, but that... that thing...

Cresting a low rise, the full majesty of the castle town of Archen unfurled before him. Long months of attrition and the fortunes of war had nibbled away at defences of solid stone. Pockmarked flame scar remained where proud kirks and noble manors had once stood. The common folk had endured the yoke of Lord and Sway alike. They had ousted the former and risen against the latter. They had faltered in the face of overwhelming force. Now they fought amongst themselves for what little remained. From the ashes of two years of war, they scrambled to redeem their lives in the fleeting hope that a better future lay ahead.

The sentries at the First Gate, huddled against the stone and shivering against the fog, saw him first. The faded insignia on their shields, white hunting falcon on sky blue, had once heralded the Earl of the Northern Gates. The townsfolk had rallied to it during their ill-fated rebellion against the Sway’s heavy hand. Now, as both Earl and Sway waned in the aftermath of the war, the falcon stood instead for the city of Archen proper. The militiamen wore armour of simple boiled leather rather than steel mail, and carried oaken cudgels rather than iron-forged steel. Their eyes tracked the Vorgruk-Stokes guardsman in equal measures jealousy and suspicion when he stopped for breath in the lee of the great granite arch. Neither offered him a hand. Still, his relief almost drowned him as he tottered beyond the safety of the city walls.

But he could not stop yet. His task was not yet done. His feet broke out again in a run.

Down the main thoroughfares he loped, the jingle of his mail echoing from the stone foundations of the townhouses lining the streets. Walls of wood and plaster soared to the low skies, overhanging jetties in the narrow wynds crowding the clouds from view. Muted whispers grasped at his ears from the unseen occupants within. Cobbles and mud alike sweltered in the frigid shade, reeking of the contents of chamber pots emptied from the windows up high. The whole town tasted of hopeless lassitude, of too many people crammed together in fear and uncertainty for far too long. But the drizzle on his face kept him awake, refreshing him for the vital final push.

Cutting a corner beneath the eaves of a tavern balcony, he almost ran over a group of fellow guardsmen emerging from its heavyset doors.

“Andrei!” one of them cried, opening both arms in wide-eyed greeting. “But you headed south with yesterday morn’s caravan! Why are you...”

The rest of the drunken slur faded behind the next corner, the guardsman named Andrei sparing only a wild glance in the general direction of his besotted comrades. What would Tomas say when he learnt what had happened to Marta and Oskar and Simeon? Would he ever again think back fondly upon their childhood soirees into the wild?

What would he and the others think of the one who had survived unscathed?

Castle Sokol, named for the ruling family of which the late Earl had been the last, reared up from behind the crowded tenements. Once home to the Earl himself, Vorgruk and Stokes had appropriated the derelict ruin after the civil war. They saw within it potential as an operational base to complement the administrative heart of their business at Stokes’s Estate an afternoon’s ride to the south. Now only single-minded profiteers and sadistic torturers walked its coldly majestic halls.

The squat fortifications and ugly square keep marked the true heart of the town. Only the aeromancer’s tower to the south rising higher into the cloud. Once they had maintained the killing grounds outside its walls with deadly care, keeping them clear of all cover. Now they bustled in an overrun morass of refugee tents, opportunistic hawkers, and black-eyed pickpockets. Come high noon, a steady stream of wagons would bear their unsavoury cargoes to and from Castle Sokol . Even now, grimacing ranks of guardsmen kept clear the cart tracks along the main thoroughfare to the First Gate. They gaped openly at the sight of one of their number running pell-mell and helter-skelter for the keep, dishevelled and distraught.

The murky moat beneath the drawbridge rippled as the rain strengthened. Frigid shadows enveloped him beneath the iron guillotine of the portcullis. Only the light of the murder holes, used to spill burning oil and fire-heated sand upon any foolish enough to challenge its military might, punctured the darkness. With the last of the strength in his legs the guardsman stumbled into the cramped courtyard beyond. He jostled amongst bodies either training under the watchful eye of the Castle Serjeant or guarding the gates to the labyrinth of gaols below.

For a moment he stood there, lost. Then Serjeant Tobias saw him, moustache of luxuriously waxed ivory bristling at the interruption to his weapons regime. The novitiate guardsmen whispered amongst themselves that his bellow could break a mammoth’s charge. He used it to great effect now to make sure that he had everybody’s undivided attention.

“Ho there, guardsman! What news from the Wolf’s Trail?”

“It comes!” Andrei replied at the top of his lungs into the sudden silence, tottering at the veritable end of his tether. Curious pairs of eyes peered down on the commotion from arrow slits in the thick granite walls. Galvanised by their glimmering interest, the valiant guardsman mustered the energy for one last terrified cry.

“The Scarlet Shadow comes!”

Then he collapsed headfirst into the trampled mud.

[Flames of Hyperion]

He sat alone by the market halls, curled up in the lee of a broken stone wall. Castle Sokar squatted in stout defiance to his fore, Archen City Hall to his left, the Grand Kirk to his right. The cold seeped into his bones from the draft through his clothes and the rocks in the small of his back. Long grasping shadows hid in the forecourt from the low mid-morning sun, engulfing fully half of the tight-packed tents in chilly embrace.

He was not a townsman, for he wore robes outlandish and muddied with travel. He was not a beggar, for swords hung at his waist and forlorn spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose. He was not a soldier, for the insignia upon his travelworn tabard belonged to neither Salvic nobleman nor Sway templar. He was not a scholar, for the eyes beneath his spectacles sunk beneath shadows into an early, vacant grave.

He sat alone, and he sniffed, and he tasted. He sniffed the purposeless quagmire of unwashed human bodies, their sewage and their excrement leaking into the waters of the castle moat. He tasted their fear of cudgel and sword borne by the various liveried guards patrolling the streets. White Falcon for city, Burning Hammer and Fist for company, Crown and Coin for King, All-Seeing Eye for Sway. He breathed of their bleak hope for the future in the knowledge that it could not get any worse. It settled in his lungs and drowned there in the depths of his own desolation.

He sat alone, and he listened, and he learned. He listened to a pair of merchants discussing the old folk tale of the Scarlet Shadow, of how it would waylay unfortunate travellers and burn their possessions to cinders. He learned of how it would leave the victim alive but forever haunted by its hollow eyes and empty face. A Vorgruk-Stokes guardsman dismissed the story with the butt of his halberd and a coarse laugh, clearing a path for the latest flesh wagon to trundle clear of the creaking drawbridge. He caught the underlying tension between the three, and wondered what in their conversation caused them to harbour so much unspoken fear.

He sat alone, and he watched, and he saw. He watched a man with striking orange hair part the milling crowds as though they never existed, like red pike climbing the churning mountain stream. He saw a young scholar stride past, her eyes fixated in smouldering anger upon the keep of weeping grey stone. He observed a tall, well-dressed man slip from a postern gate and disappear like an ephemeral shadow into the mass of humanity.

He supposed he envied them all, each the hero of his own story, each the guardian of her own hearth. Every person had a life of their own to tell and be told.

He did too.

His story led from the far-flung isles of Nippon, through the war-torn wastes of Raiaera, to the snows of Salvar. He’d fought daemons in the Night of Nefarious Flame, undead constructs in the Corpse War. He'd even battled the Forgotten One Xem’zund himself, amidst the bloody copses of the Lindequalme. He’d walked the floating cherry blossoms of the Imperial Gardens, the roiling waves of the Great Chasm, the impenetrable precipices of the Dagger Peaks.

He had a hearth as well, in the figurative sense at least. Nameless, foreign, and a wanderer, he had little business owning a home or fathering a family. But his parents and siblings still lived somewhere in faraway Naniwa. And his heart still belonged to somewhere... rather, someone. He could still hold to that integrity as zealously as a templar might fight for his faith, as doggedly as a bannerman might vouch for his liege, as ardently as a bladesinger might wish for her country’s revival.

He sat alone, though, his head bowed in exhaustion and his teeth grit against pain. His chest festered in puissant agony, the cross-shaped scar there carved into his flesh courtesy of the Dread Necromancer’s dying curse. His mind throbbed with every feverish heartbeat, reliving again and again the moment the Dark Lich stabbed the vampiric blade into her breast. Like dull black stones, his eyes sunk into the contours of his face. Gaunt ribs shivered beneath his thin cotton tunic. The two-month walk north from what remained of Raiaera had left his knees knobbly and weak. He knew on a base level that had to regather his strength before he continued, in this last Gateway to the North. From here onwards, all vestiges of civilisation fell away, leaving only wilderness and death.

He sat alone, and though he tasted and he heard and he saw, he never spoke. And thus he sensed first the trouble in the air, the growing desperation as yet another of Vorgruk and Stokes’s supply convoys trundled past into Castle Sokar. He knew it carried enough food to feed the entire camp of refugees for a day, more food in fact than the camp had seen at once in a month. He knew that the refugees knew that too. He felt the tension crest.

He sat alone, and though he tasted and he heard and he saw, he never moved. And thus he was not in the way when the crowd turned ugly. He did not see the shove of a halberd haft that accidentally felled a young woman pleading for food to feed her baby. He did not hear the angry cry of her burly husband beside her, a refugee from Pestovo in the early stages of the war who’d had just about enough living off scraps. He did not taste the sudden fear in the young guardsman called Tomas, who had only accidentally tapped her whilst trying to keep them from the loaded wagons he protected.

With a roar of anger, the crowd of refugees became a mob. They had only two things on their mind. Revenge against the Vorgruk-Stokes hireling. And looting the treasure crates of breads, cheeses, smoked meats, and freshly harvested vegetables.

Pandemonium broke out.

[Luned]

Of everywhere on Althanas, Luned had never expected Salvar to become her second home. Yet here she found herself, chasing rumors with the same tenacity she thought she'd lost to this region just months ago.

It helped to have a cause. Luned may have known the extent of the damage of Salvar's human trafficking problem before in theory, but through Chronicle, she witnessed it in living color. Their organization introduced her to the urgency of the affliction and she grasped at it for purpose when she failed to find it elsewhere. With her friends' resources, she pursued the great villains of Vorgruk-Stokes, and thus she set out on the road to Archen.

Along the way, she came to realize that she traveled in the wake of the growing legend of the Scarlet Shadow. Instead of fear, she eavesdropped on the seeming tall tales with morbid curiosity; the mystery gave her something to ponder when the rain kept her up at night.

The scribe journeyed with a supply caravan and arrived at daybreak, when the great, gray clouds parted to allow a glimpse of sun. Its golden light merely teased in the first hours, the chill of night holding fast to stone and timber. Archen proper quickly proved itself as depressing as she'd anticipated of a fortified city influenced by slavers. It had been easy enough to blend in –– not many heads turned at a mousey woman in patchwork clothing, keeping to the fringe –– and she took some time to orient herself.

The meager warmth of Salvaran summer slowly thawed the city, and with it rose the stench. A staggering number of bodies crowded Archen's heart and it began to affect Luned's composure as she navigated the filth. Lack of adequate rest on her travels only further justified her new decision to find the safe house sooner rather than later. Cutting her exploration short, she slipped away from the throng, finding privacy in a shadowy recess behind some buildings.

Luned felt around her pocket and retrieved a minuscule map sketched on the corner of some newsprint. She eyed it closely, turning it until its orientation corresponded with what she projected as her current position. The tiniest mark designated her destination and she approximated the path to get there. She frowned; it looked like quite a walk, situated beyond the far side of the refugee camp. But still, if it was dry and safe as Flint said it would be, she could only be grateful. Companionship with a former criminal had its perks.

The route Luned chose circled wide around the camp, looping through neighborhoods where locals made a begrudged effort to continue with their daily lives in spite of growing claustrophobia. At first, the relentless patrol of the various guards had her on edge, but none spared her a second glance as she kept her head down and scurried from street to street. She clutched her cape close around her and willed herself invisible, hood drawn over her crown of dark braids.

The first, distant shouts spurred by the soldier's mishap went unnoticed, but before long, the conflict rose into cacophony and set fire under Luned's wearying step. She made the mistake of skirting too close to the camp and saw the violent desperation first hand: soldiers swarmed and fugitives fled, drawing weapon-wielding guardsmen after them as they made off with precious supplies. Panic inspired clashes even on the edges, dangerously close, and she circled back behind the emptying market halls. She skulked alongside the buildings there, avoiding the flurry as others evacuated.

The scribe stopped, thoroughly spooked, as she strode past a lapse in a tall, stone wall and realized it was haunted. A man in Akashiman robes had stuffed himself away nearly out of sight, but she caught a glimmer of spectacles from under the dark hair of his dipped head, and concern settled in for this fellow foreigner.

"Excuse me," Luned greeted him softly in Tradespeak, afraid to earn unwanted attention. "Are you hurt?"

The young man lifted his head, hollow eyes meeting hers, and she finally noticed the wound that festered hot on his chest. She mouthed a silent curse, coming to two conclusions all at once: she knew who he was, this man she'd never met, and he needed shelter as badly as she.

"Hear that? There's a riot," Luned said, brow furrowed. "We need to get out of here. Come with me."

She extended her hand.

[Flames of Hyperion]

He never saw the blow that felled the mother and her babe. He never heard her husband’s screams as he beat on Tomas’s head with a rusty brick. He never tasted the blood that ran through the cobblestones, slick and coppery.

He never saw the guards lower halberds as the tide of unwashed bodies swamped their wagons. He never heard the blubbering cries of the wounded or the vindictive shouts of the vengeful. He never tasted the sweat on the faces of the looters as they made away with their prizes.

He never had to.

Malignant miasma whispered words of desolation and loathing as it swirled about his ankles. Waves of dark emotion reflected in his glasses from the rain-splattered pavement. Eddies of hate clung to his limp fingers, lost amidst flooding fear. Torrents of greed. Tides of wrath. Bloodlust and pain. Sorrow. Despair.

Each cudgel blow pounded into his heart with the force of a thousand Death Lords’ spells. Each shout seared his mind with the heat of a dozen volcanoes. Each shred of fear melted on his tongue with the acrid, bittersweet aroma of failure.

Something stirred in the depths of his soul. Something not dark, not ugly, but fiery and passionate. Something that burned in the name of justice and honour.

I can help, it offered in measured, ethereal calm. Call on me again. Let us teach those who oppress and subjugate what it means to cower. Let us show to them the error of their ways, and let them never again wield whip and cudgel against the vulnerable.

No. Not here. Not now. Too many people... too much risk...

I will help you control your flame. Together, you and I can minimise any collateral damage. How many more will suffer if you don’t make a stand today? How many more will the slavers subdue beneath their yoke?

Please... so tired... no more.

It will not last long, the voice promised.

No... pain... don’t want... to hurt anybody...

Shadows tugged at his mind, dragging him deeper and deeper into the morass. He had no choice but to reach out towards the bright light. His only hope. His only...

Who was she who offered her hand in salvation?

Kayu?


***

He knew this place.

When he’d visited here before, it had bustled with the to-and-fros of a hundred merchants and their clientele. Cheerful conversations had echoed in his ears over a cacophony of footfalls, though all had swirled without heed around his best impression of a human statue. Greetings and smiles had flown over his head, back and forth as he stood in the eye of the typhoon. He remembered the tantalising frown that had played upon her brow when she’d spotted him, gaping at her like a long lost ghost. He remembered the way his heart had stopped in his chest when she’d recognised him for the first time in thirteen years.

Even if it had only been a dream. But oh, what a dream. And something about it - something intangible, something indescribable, something magical - had told him that she had shared in it too. Even if they hadn’t actually met in person, in that moment their minds had most definitely made contact.

But now he stood here on his own. Alone in a deserted market, with nothing but his memories for company.

“Have I got your attention now, shadow mine?”

No, not alone. A thin haggard figure emerged from the shadows below the eaves of the teahouse to his fore, gaunt where ribs showed through dirty threadbare cotton. Haunted black eyes stared at him from behind grimy spectacles, hollow cheeks below and strained brow above. Lustreless hair the colour of a raven’s feathers hung in limp clumps from its scalp, matted with sweat and blood and the detritus of months of wandering. Its face and clothes seemed vaguely familiar, as if... it was...

Me...?

“Correct. To the head of the class, nameless. Teacher’s pet. Foreigner.”

The insults stung, reminder of his lonely childhood. But worse still was the way in which it hurled them at him. Did he really sound so fatigued? His voice could have rasped wood, so hoarse did it escape his throat. And the last sibilant, vicious hiss dripped venom and enmity.

What have I done...

“Don’t have the time to talk about that,” his shadow dismissed with a callous, cruel wave of his emaciated hand. “When was the last time you slept?”

The young man flinched. Once upon a time he might have sought refuge in sleep, in the dreams they brought. But nowadays it only brought nightmares. Faceless horrors clawed with burning fingers at his chest, their teeth tearing strips of flesh from his bones. Daemonic abominations chased him through the shadows, mocking him with visions of his failure and his doom. Trapped in a labyrinth of looming towers and locked gates, oppressive fear inundated his insignificant spirit. And always the eyes, a million bright red orbs in the skies above. Watching, staring, judging, damning. Pitying, hating. Condemning.

“I’ll hold them off for now. Just remember that I can’t get to you if you’re not willing to listen. Which is what you’re going to do.”

It took a deep breath, as if bracing itself. Something in its eyes arrested his attention. Something dark, something hungry, something longing.

“Why?”

Why what?

“Why are you doing this to me?”

Doing what?

“You envy those normals. Those refugees. Those peasants. In every one of them you see something you want. Hearth. Home. Family. Lover. Friend. And yet whenever you get a chance to grab one of those things for yourself, you run like a coward in the opposite direction. From the Academy. From Naniwa. From Ueda. From Nippon. And now from Raiaera. Why?”

Because...

“Your curse is something that you’ve imposed upon yourself. You could just as easily free yourself from it. Choose to settle down. Go back to Raiaera. Help rebuild it. Study magic in Tor Elythis. Teach it in Beinost. Find a girl. Make a family. You could do that, you know. You could have done it. You could have been happy.”

He finally realised what it was in his shadow’s eyes. Not anger. Not hate. Not guilt. Not even sorrow. Just a tired yearning for what could have been. Or, if he were to trust its words, what still might be.

But...

“So why? Why do you do this to yourself?”

Because...

“It’s her, isn’t it. You’re clinging to this silly idea of heroism, this misguided notion of self-sacrifice and martyrdom, all for her. Why?”

Because...

“Because you’d never be able to forgive yourself if you strayed from your ideals? Why?”

I...

“Because then you’d never be able to face her again? Never be able to one day, someday, walk alongside her?”

She...

“You think you’re doing it all for her, do you? Even after what happened in the Night of Nefarious Flame, when the fates themselves decided that you should not live in her light? Even after Choson, after Naniwa, and after Raiaera, when all your attempts to protect her from the shadows simply led her into greater danger? How deluded can you get? How unhealthy can you be?”

But...

“Okay. Let’s take a leap of faith. Let’s suppose for a moment that this is a sane path for you to walk. What happens if you never catch up to her? What happens if you spend your entire life chasing that whimsy, that dream?”

Even so...

“Even if you don’t die of old age, withered and disappointed and a total failure. What happens when you catch her at last, and she refuses to meet your eyes? What happens if she doesn’t see you at all? If she’s forgotten about you completely?”

Even so...

“What you’re chasing, who you’re chasing, is but a figment of your imagination. An ideal you cling to because you don’t know any better. Do you really think she’d appreciate that? Do you really think she’d care?”

And yet...

Suddenly it was upon him. Bony fingers curled like cold steel vices around his neck. Crazed eyes stared him flush in the brow, bloodshot and gleaming with frantic fervour. It had such incredible strength. Such desperate power. And, deep inside, he sympathised with the pain that had driven it to such insanity.

The marketplace crumbled around him. Wooden stalls splintered, paper partitions wavered and faded. Cerulean skies darkened into night, tainted by the light of a thousand crimson stars. Wind howled, touched by fiery ash, and somewhere in the distance a daemon roared its challenge.

“We’re heading back now. We go to Raiaera. We start anew. We can’t protect her any more, in light or in shadow. You would thus choose the void, oblivion, nothingness. I refuse.”

Tendons clenched at the bone around his windpipe. Crooked yellow teeth snarled in stale hatred. His shadow’s spectacles pushed right up against his own, glass scraping against glass in violent repulsion.

“I yearn for a happy life, shadow mine,” it snarled, fierce and determined. “I will no longer set aside my own needs for the trifling hope that we might do something for her. Let us forsake this false heroism. Let us abandon this selfish martyrdom. Let us give up this worthless dream. It’s not as if Kayu would ever know, or care, or...”

“No.”

He whispered that word with the tip of his tongue, a mere trifle against the fury of the wind and the quaking of the parched earth at his feet. Her name, spoken in his own brittle battle-worn voice, rippled through his mind. Heartache moulded into resolve, bittersweet nostalgia into the faintest of hopes.

Did his shadow know? That his own yearning matched its?

That he would do anything and everything for her, even if she was only a dream?

“No,” he spoke again, and this time it galvanised him into action. The world slowed in the midst of its apocalypse, held together again by the tenuous fabric of his mind. He reached up to the hands around his neck, and with surprising ease tore them away.

His yearning was stronger than its.

“I’m not done. I won’t abandon her. I won’t give up the dream. Even if it’s but a fool’s hope, but a beggar’s path. Not for all the happiness in the world.”

Time shattered. Fiery shadows engulfed the teahouse before him, where in his dream he’d met and spoken to her for the first and only time in thirteen years. But they did not consume the memory. He smelt the pungent grass of the tatami mats, the touch of vanilla where she’d sat. He tasted the richness of the bitter tea they’d shared, matched only by how sweet the cakes that accompanied it. He heard her voice once more, light and clear through his tortured mind. He recalled her smile, her laugh, the way she raised an eyebrow at him in question. The way a dark cloud passed over her features when they toasted friends long lost. The way she blinked in surprise when he remembered her family, or that she didn’t much care for western sweets. The way she glanced aside, embarrassed, at his bumbling attempts at a compliment.

You haven’t changed, have you, Yann? she’d asked.

No. No, I haven’t.

“It’s not just her. The rest of them all as well. Refugee, peasant, hero. I can’t just stand by and watch another Xem’zund come to pass. I’ve had enough... enough of pain, enough of sorrow, enough of death. There’s something I can do, even if it’s but a stone against the tide. And in the end, if that ends up saving her as well...”

“I’ve had enough too, shadow mine,” it whispered, lowering its stick-thin arms. It sighed, spectacles drooping downwards upon its dirt-smudged nose. In that moment, it looked so remarkably like him. A million crimson eyes in the sky watched and stared

“If you won’t listen to my advice, then at least heed my warning. This Scarlet Shadow act has got to stop. What you’re doing is merely creating more anarchy. You’re causing more problems than you’re solving. You can see this, can’t you?”

He frowned, comprehension starting to dawn. He opened his mouth to ask for clarification, when the world at his feet shuddered in great pain.

The fiery, shadowy tides rose once more. In the distance the daemons roared. In their wake rose a veritable tsunami of utter dread. It was all he could do to steady himself against the psychic blow, the fabric of his thoughts slipping through his fingers. Scar tissue itched and throbbed upon his chest, as if some parasite tried to chew its way out from within. His shadow looked around in panic, searching for a place to hide. Then a grim resolve passed over its gaunt face, and it turned back to face him.

The winds snapped to null. Something terrible rose from the depths of his mind, something bright and burning that cast copious drapes of darkness. He fell to his knees, clutching at his wounds as they flared in agony. His shadow raised one hand in a farewell salute.

“Pay heed to the voices in your head,” it murmured, somehow making itself audible above the discordant barrage of violence laying waste to the world around him. Perhaps it didn’t quite realise how self-serving it sounded. “Beware the suited devil. And be wary of getting too close to the girl, or...”

Something roared in his mind, something malevolent and potent and all-consuming. Darkness rushed in to claim his soul.


***

... or you’ll end up wrecking her life like you’ve done so many others.

He woke with a start. The thunder in his ears was the screaming and shouting of the riots in the square behind him. The cinders in his nose were the flame the looters wielded against castle, city hall, and kirk alike. The pain between his eyes was the flow of blood in his head as it restored consciousness. But the pain on his chest belonged to something else entirely.

“I’m sorry,” a feminine voice apologised in learned Tradespeak, low and to his right. He must have made a sound of discomfort whilst re-establishing control over his senses. “I didn’t have much choice if I wanted to get you clear.”

Her chestnut hair flowed with the shape of the sea that so many Nipponese envied, smelling of apple and of home. Her eyes, baby blue and electric, focused with grim determination on the cobbles ahead. Freckles dusted her pale cheeks, bundled against the autumn rains. This close, he had to wonder how he’d mistaken her, even in a state of fevered fugue.

She had one of his arms slumped over her back like a sack of mouldy vegetables, a bony shoulder supporting his upper torso. Though she did her best to avoid the worst of the puckered scar, his weight was all that was necessary to aggravate the tender, inflamed skin. His other arm scraped the ground in limp, boneless burden. Stray rocks took their toll upon knuckles bruised and battered.

His instinctive reaction was to try to relieve her of her load. But the movement backfired, and instead he nearly tripped them both onto the treacherous stones. She kept her balance with a little cry of surprise, and he just about managed to get his feet beneath him on his second try. This time he disengaged with a weak stagger, needlessly trying his best not to knock her over; small she may have been, but without a doubt she was no pushover.

“I... uh...”

Monotonic and coarse, the syllables escaped his lips much as they had his shadow’s in his dream. The force of their passage dislodged something bitter and bloody. He swallowed in haste despite the wretched dry fur that coated the inside of his mouth, throat-knuckle bobbing as he fought not to gag. Cold wind blew the detritus of early autumn about his feet, carrying with it the sounds of distant violence.

“Than... thank you. I... it’s probably better if...”

In awkward hesitation he paused, then shrugged and gave her his best sheepish smile. With any luck that would be enough.

“... wait!”

Or not.

[Luned]

“It’s just a bit farther,” Luned reassured her involuntary cargo. The map remained crumpled away in her pocket, but she had stared at it long enough that she could see it on the backs of her eyelids. Just a few more blocks…

“What is?” the young man asked through the ache, shoulders hunched against an especially biting breeze. The comfort of the sun seemed a memory in the shade of the buildings around them.

The scribe fell silent as some locals passed them in a hurry; all bore tools and weapons, drawn to the riot like curious, suicidal moths. “A safe place,” she murmured, abandoning the temptation to add a disclaimer of hope to that clarification. “Do you need help walking?”

“I shall do my best.”



The hidey hole Flint had organized for Luned resided in the loft above a forge. The establishment’s owner was nowhere in sight, perhaps already joined in on the gory festivities that had fallen into a cacophonous white noise in the distance. “There should be outdoor access,” she muttered as they hobbled around the blackened-brick shopfront and down the alley alongside. The passage wasn’t particularly inviting with its claustrophobic, refuse-laden ambiance, but lo and behold, a set of of even narrower steps laid just around the corner. “Stay here,” she told him, and he rested against the rail as she picked her way up the precarious set of steps.

A rusty padlock barred entry, but the scribe made quick work of it with a touch of magic. Luned opened the weather-worn door to reveal the attic within, and out swept a draft of perfumed smoke. Someone had been using the room to dry large bundles of herbs which hung from rafters in the sharp angles of the ceiling. She didn’t blame them; the forge’s chimney ran up through the side, keeping it perfectly dry and warm. The space offered just enough room for a couple chairs in the back by a discreet little window, and a mattress occupied the floor where the beams sat too low for standing room.

Satisfied, Luned returned to the man who waited below. “Seems about right,” she smiled convincingly. “Can you handle the stairs?”

The man nodded in determination, one hand lifting to adjust his spectacles as the other braced against the wall of stone and brick. The trip up took longer than even he expected, with a pause in the middle to catch his breath, but soon he joined the scribe in the cozy embrace of the loft. When she noticed him wheeze a bit, she unlatched the window, and a crossbreeze whisked away the remaining smoke.

“My name is Luned Bleddyn,” the scribe introduced herself as she bolted the door behind them. The window offered just enough meager light to keep mystery at bay, and she joined her fellow foreigner in one of the old chairs. “I keep the Althanaeum in Radasanth. It is my job to know the histories of Althanas and the people who participated in them, so hopefully this does not seem a strange observation… but you fought Xem’zund, didn’t you?”

At mention of the Dread Necromancer’s true name, the young man flinched and drew in on himself. Distant violence washed through his ragged hair, and a trick of the long shadows cast his gaunt features in skeletal fear. It took him a moment or two to rally, inhaling deep of the heady strength of dried herb.

“That man is gone,” he replied at length, his voice as soft as the sussurating breeze, as chilly as the first touch of winter’s frost. “I am not Ingwe Helyanwe. I am...”

Wanderer. Foreigner. Nameless.

“I am Nanashi.”

Luned suppressed a frown, hands clasped in her lap. “Apologies for my bluntness, Nanashi, but I didn’t expect… well, I might as well ask. What are you doing here, of all places?”

Again the silence reigned between them, heartbeats of tension broken only by glimpses of bittersweet memory. Even in his chair he held himself like a hunted animal, like a falcon poised for flight at the first sign of trouble. One hand never strayed far from the pouches at his waist; the other gripped tight the rough-hewn wood, heedless of the splinters digging into his palm.

“Running?” he said, but his intonation turned it into a question rather than a statement. Before she could do much more than furrow her brow deeper, though, he answered himself. “No. Searching. Trying… to learn.”

Such a convoluted answer didn’t help much in the way of understanding. But Luned acknowledged that it really was none of her business, and she wasn’t inclined to pry into the pain she saw written in his every motion and thought. “You’re welcome to rest here,” she offered. “I’ll be in and out, myself, but it should be relatively safe… as long as the commotion doesn’t reach us.” She had opened her cape and rummaged through one of several interior pockets, her arm disappearing all the way to the elbow. From it, she drew a shiny, green apple, which she then offered it to her unexpected guest. He accepted it with polite hesitance, and then she extracted a second, along with some dense bread wrapped in cloth. Last came a water-filled flask of cobalt glass, at which point it became obvious that these were no mundane pockets. “What I could really go for is some hot tea,” she attempted to lighten the conversation, “but this’ll do, I suppose.”

He nodded, masking fatigue behind a wan smile. She ushered him to eat, and so he did, taking small bites and chewing with care as though he didn’t quite trust his stomach. All the while he remained silent, aside from an apologetic glance or two at his host, and held himself ready to flee at the first opportunity. In the distance the furore waned, waxed, and waned once more.

Luned ruminated on her decision to drag this mess of a man along as they fell into a silence that wasn’t entirely unwelcome. Flint may have found this level of trust concerning if he were here, but it really wasn’t about trust at all, was it? The scribe acknowledged that most of her motivations ran on curiosity, if anything, and this Nanashi character was curious indeed. She wasn’t sure if she should have been surprised when he nodded off mid-snack, so she shrugged it off and dug out a tiny, battered journal in the meantime. She pored over some of the meticulous, tiny notes within as she chewed on dry, nutty bread…

And the scribe began to plot.