State Of Affairs: The Eiskalt War

[Silence Sei]

With the growing number of Ixian Knights on the horizon, The alliance between Misery Business and The Order of the Crimson Hand wavered. The temporary capture of Zack Blaze as well as the disappearance of Lichensith Ulroke made it so the rescuers of Eiskalt were victorious in their efforts. However, due to the insurmountable chaos caused by the war, several cities and most of the Eiskalt gates were destroyed. Many of the inside attackers have either disappeared or were captured, some even turned on their brethren.

The chaos has caused something to stir in Eiskalt, something that nobody could have predicted....



((Welcome to the first 'Interactive Conclusion' for the Eiskalt war! This is an opportunity for those that either disappeared during their rounds or just outright need some better cosure for their characters to do so. This is the official canon ending for the war, so keep that in mind and make yourselves some brief conclusions for your characters! Have fun guys!))

[Ruby]

Set after the Eiskalt War, and the events of No Longer Me (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?28022-No-Longer-Me-Featured&p=236098#post236098).

The Light Left in the Darkness

“I failed.”

“Yes dear, I know.”

“You failed, too,” he spat.

Leopold and Ruby Winchester, though married, were recently divorced in spirit. They attested their current hatred of one another’s company by continuing their barbed insults across the gallery table without looking one another in the eye.

“Provided you are aware of that, let us finally press the matter at hand.” Ruby poked at a boiled potato with her silver fork, and devoured it whole. She, like Leopold, forewent manners in the absence of guests to entertain. They dined together, in candlelight, in the heart of an abandoned trade outpost in Salvar’s wastes.

“How are we going to proceed,” Leopold outlined. He mimicked his wife’s eating, though found considerably less pleasure in the bland but nourishing food.

“How I would like us to proceed,” she corrected. She followed up the potato with a carrot and pea medley. Gravy dripped seditious down her chin.

“Oh. But of course my dear, I forgot you are the head of the household.”

This, Leopold immediately realised, was the entirely wrong thing to say. Ruby, restrained in her aggressive outbursts after the fall of Eiskalt, bided her time. She chewed noisily and swallowed. She set her cutlery down on her plate, prongs and blade resting on the overcooked steak that awaited her, and cleared her throat.

“You,” she began forcibly, “gave up your status in this family when thought yourself a hero in Corone.”

The incident to which she was referring was one of Leopold’s defining moments in his long history. He had ended a reign of terror in the capital of Radasanth, alongside one Otto Bastum. Sadly, no fame did he earn as reward for his part. Death, for the immortal few, came at the cost of a new face and a fresh start.

“I…,” he began, but trailed off. He fell into silence, save for chewing and the beating of a pained heart.

“You will divert your attentions to where they can be used to good effect.” Ruby left no room for his imagination and way with words to run riot. It was a command. It was an order Leopold would follow to her inexorable letter. “It is time we stopped allowing these distractions to sway us from the path we chose.”

Continuing with her evening meal, the spell singer picked her cutlery up and began to hack at the steak. Stringy tendrils slopped into the pool of gravy she had left purposefully, and the ring of bone at its core she discarded to the flagstones. A mastiff lingered in the shadows, stirred to motion, and darted beneath the table to take its fill.

“I regret I forget to which path you refer.” Leopold sat back in his chair. No longer in the grandiose surrounds of House Winchester, the rickety furniture did little to ease the pain of his recent death, but lifted the weight from his stomach and the numbness of their arduous day.

“Chronicle.”

Three hours after they had taken their seats at the table, Ruby Winchester finally spoke clearly. That singular word undid the previous three weeks of subterfuge and heartache they had endured in trying to rectify the six months of pain they endured.

“You think that will bring him back?”

“Don’t be idiotic, Leopold.” She looked up, meat half to lips, eyes blazing with a fire long dimmed by war, grief, and hopelessness. The fight she lost in the defence of a distant island seemed to return. It blazed embers in the hearth of the only oath the Winchester family had managed to keep. “He is dead.”

“Something that we all experience, from time to time…”

Ruby chewed her steak. Leopold took a goblet into his confidence and tilted it back and forth. Bourbon, his second love, was a distant memory. He admired the hearty foam to the mead they found in the cellar of the outpost, but not its yeasty lustre. He took a swig.

“This time is different,” she said after a thoughtful pause. “This time,” she put the cutlery down side by side, indicating her loss of appetite, and reflected her husband’s recline. “This time the great Duffy Bracken, bard of bards, fool of fools, was laid low eternal.”

“But…,” he drained the goblet and set it down a little too forcibly onto the worn tabletop. “You went looking for him.”

“I went looking for closure,” she snapped. The fire in her eyes turned into an inferno. “I found it in the acquisition of something I thought lost.” She stopped talking. This, Leopold knew, was indication for him to delve deeper.

“A smile?” was all he could offer. A click of his fingers refilled the goblet. The mastiff skulked back into the shadows. The humidity, along with the merchant’s discomfort, greatly intensified.

“Purpose,” she corrected. Her eyes dimmed. Her hair lengthened, reddened, and curled. She clicked her own fingers, and wine poured into the tall crystal glass besides her discarded meal. “Purpose gives me reason to keep on fighting.” She leant to pick up the glass. She came into the candlelight just enough to stir Leopold from his sedition. “A reason, dear husband, to love a man I do not know anymore.”

Leopold could hardly argue with that. A week ago, he became corrupt by a plague and tossed from the back of a dragon. Despite his immortal status as a god amongst the forgotten people of Berevar, the fall, to say the least, had humbled him. Three days of agony gave him new life, but also a new face. The change was easy to adjust to for the merchant of a hundred faces, but even his wife found her wits tested by what he had become.

“I am,” he sighed. “I am reborn in the image of what I was the day I became…Leopold.” By that, he meant the day he and Clarissa Montague had rejected the Old Gods and chosen to live on Althanas. He clicked his knuckles. Nuanced by the discomfort her accusations caused, he picked at his skin between forefinger and index. With a slick tug, he pulled a feather from the sinew, and discarded it.

“And I…,” Ruby began. She struggled to speak, anger finally rekindling in her heart. “I am sick and tired of containing the Phoenix within.” Her hair grew longer still. “Let us turn the hourglass. Let us put this world right. Let us,” she cut herself off, her voice strained, her breathing erratic.

“Let us put Truth on trial, and hide in the shadows no longer.” Leopold Winchester recanted their oath with fervour. He discarded his mortal form, and with black wings looking overhead, and fire dancing around his wife’s radiant beauty, the Rook and the Firebird found themselves once again.