Chapter 19: Chapter 14: Recompense

In my life, I have had many changes of heart. Moments where, as if discovering some lost and ancient secret, I have found a perspective previously unknown. They can be warm, cold, comfortable, or agonizing. When a realization dawns, it can be like the first flare of fire on a dim winter’s night, or the biting lance of wintry water. I’ve had my share of those moments, especially during that first season in Khaldara. And, in that Varsha camp, dwelling in the shadow of the Dead God, one such occurred.

It had been a slow day. Luran and Hemma were still fighting off the worst of their plains-sickness while Azareth was busy poking at what he believed to be threads of necromancy. Aryssa and I had plenty of time to ourselves, spent alone in the camp or on the riverbank.

I sat on the shore while Aryssa waded in, hellbent on finding something more palatable for dinner than the Varsha’s typical meals. I tended to Elegy’s edge, even knowing mithril needed no such care. I nonetheless found comfort in the rasp of a whetstone, the tenderness given to something… otherwise cruel. And, sometimes, it felt as though I spoke with the blade. It carried some measure of my father’s burden, his stain… and sometimes, he felt a little bit closer than a thousand miles away.

The mithril glinted in the setting sun. Aryssa cried out as she lost her footing and fell half-clothed into the river. She resurfaced, shaking out her sodden hair, froze as she spotted something, and dove once more into the current. This time, she emerged wearing a victorious grin, holding some sort of crustacean over her head.

I returned her smile, then fixed my eyes once again on my blade. Aryssa splashed, coming out of the water and dropping her prey in a pail. Then, the cold, wet kiss of her arms slid around me; her hair draped over mine, and her chin rested on my shoulder as she embraced me from behind.

I saw us, reflected in Elegy’s mithril. Our dark hair mingled, impossible to tell where mine stopped and hers began. Our eyes, mine blue, hers impossibly green, both alight. I remembered the dream I’d had beneath Azareth’s temple. The woman’s face that had looked back… and her grief, heavy enough to buckle the knees.

My scars burned. Not lessened by the damp chill of Aryssa’s body. I had felt happiness with her, unlike anything I’d felt before. Deep, profound, delightful. And yet… I knew it could never last, so long as I danced around my past.

Looking at her, reflected in that blade, I realized that I trusted her. I trusted her, I cherished her, I loved her. I knew her devotion, as surely as she knew mine. And yet, somehow, for a cold and distant fear… I was hiding myself away.

She had seen my demon-fire and loved me still. She had seen my scars and told me I was beautiful. I pulled her lips to mine, tasted her passion, and separated, gripping Elegy white-knuckled.

“I’m ready,” I said.

She blinked, eyes softening, and spread her lips in a smile. I took her outstretched hand, rising from my seat with conviction like steel.

* * *

There were many Dreamers among the Varsha, though it seemed the bulk of them were occupied addressing the mistmen threat. They had been conducting their business in a derelict fort some distance up the mountain. Still, one remained in camp, tending to the affairs of his people, helping some to grieve, others to forgive… all, to find peace. I hoped that he could help me on my own path toward that goal, to cleanse me of my scars’ fire.

The Dreamer’s tent was one of the largest in the camp, propped up by a great many poles. As Aryssa and I ducked in, we were greeted by a thin haze of smoke pooling within, drifting from incense, burning in thuribles of blackest iron. It did not smell acrid like burning wood, but had a tender aroma about it… one that reminded me of evenings spent with my father in the Elthysian countryside. It smelled of dew and grass, and the faint hint of manure. It smelled like the damp of a gathering rain, like the autumn wind gently blowing by.

There were several bedrolls in the tent, some occupied by Varsha in deep slumber, others by direlings in silent meditation. Our entrance seemed to bother no one, as they all remained focused on whatever lay beyond.

“Greetings,” said a voice to my right, and turning, I locked eyes with one of the Dreamers from the rite—the same man, I thought, who had seemed to lead them. He watched me with foggy eyes, dark hair tied with iron bands around his horns. His robes, dark and vast, rippled as he swayed, and his mouth spread in a welcoming smile. He offered his hand to shake, exposing his gaunt, sunken skin. His bones were visible between his flesh, colored like a corpse just recently dead.

I shook his hand, and he looked me over, head to toe. “You are not Varsha,” he said, before observing Aryssa similarly. “And you… are the bard who has graced our camp with so much music.”

She smiled, but kept her eyes soft and serious. She rested her hand on my shoulder, reassurance given.

“My name is Valhera,” I told the Dreamer, and his distant eyes widened.

“You are the one Thellen spoke about,” he said. “He said that were it not for you, his entire patrol would have been lost.”

“I was fighting for my own survival, too.”

“If you had only cared for yourself, you would have fled. You have my thanks, for saving my kin.” His body hinged in a shallow bow, eyes closed deferentially. “My name is Gand. I am the eldest Dreamer among the Varsha. What may I do for you, Valhera?”

I felt the weight of my scars, in that moment. But there was another question I had, one that had weighed on me since I’d left the towering walls of Orloth. A question I had considered asking Azareth… one that, even given my newfound conviction, I found much easier to speak of than the horrible burn of my scars.

As if in response, grief seemed to pulse from Elegy’s blade. Slow, I unsheathed the sword, holding it flat in my two hands. I offered it to the Dreamer, and he ran his hand over the engraved blade.

“Mithril?” he asked, and I gave a brief nod.

“My adopted father… was a paladin,” I said. “He told me that objects can hold great power when tied to powerful memories. That they can capture some part of a person when they die, if it held enough meaning to them.”

“Your father was wise.”

“In this blade,” I continued, “I’ve… seen a woman’s face. I think she was the one who found me as an infant and gave me to my father. I have questions I’d like to ask her… if her spirit still lingers in the metal.”

Gand was silent for a while, eyes closed, gripping Elegy’s length. He bowed his head, smoothed his hand over it, and muttered what I guessed to be a mantra or prayer.

“Yes,” he said, after some time in silence. “I sense… an abiding grief. Many hands have wielded this blade, but there is one… who still inhabits it.”

His eyes creaked open, seeming to take greater interest in me. He pushed Elegy down so that I held it by my side, and looked deep into my eyes. “And there is something else, I sense. Not engraved in the mithril… but carved into your very flesh.”

I hesitated. I said nothing, feeling their anger burn.

“It lingers about you, as a dark cloud.” He touched my shoulder where the highest scar started, and unconsciously, I flinched away. “It is… agony, anger, grief… but it is not your own.”

Aryssa’s hand wormed its way into mine. And, seeing her gentle green gaze, I willed my racing heart to slow. I remembered a phrase from her song, and realized how it had nestled into my heart.

The songs of our kin have forever been

A tale writ in iron and blood.

“There were seven men,” I said, looking down as I recalled. “An undead had killed one of their daughters. And I, as a direling in Elthysia, was bound to suffer the blame. They attacked my father.” I remembered the blood, spurting from his leg, his concern for my sake even as his body failed him. “I set out to set it right. Put the undead down, not with empathy, but… with steel.”

My stare bore into the Dreamer’s. “I was foolish. I did not know the undead. It nearly killed me, but… I’m a Furor. My demon-fire burned, and I ripped it apart. Then the men found me, bent on taking my head.”

Aryssa’s tail brushed my own. I closed my eyes, voice dropping lower. “They were farmers. They had hatchets, pitchforks, kitchen knives. As my demon-fire burned, I… slaughtered them like animals.”

Gand’s voice. “They hurt your father. They sought to take your life. You were only defending your own.”

“They were grieving.” I remembered my hands, soaked in my neighbors’ blood. Hot, viscous, dripping horrible gore. “They were afraid.” I thought of their eyes, shot open in terror, their final gasps and groans as the life left their lungs. “They didn’t… understand.”

“And even now, you see them.”

“Yes. Ari, she… helps me forget. Helps me see… me.” When I met her eyes, they were soft as the sweet, alluring brush of her skin. “But dreams like that…” I whispered. “They linger.”

“What happened next?”

My back was aflame. In my mind, I heard the crack of the scourge, felt the blood falling down like rain. “The necromage, Azareth. He whipped me.” I grimaced, remembering the faces, set in anger, their hands descending to deal what harm was just. “He had the families whip me. The widows, orphans… grieving parents. Every single one carved their anger and grief into my flesh.”

Understanding dawned over Gand’s face. When I refuse to meet his eyes, his gentle hand lifted my chin. A serious expression nestled in his many wrinkles and lines.

“He made you a scapegoat,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

Gand sighed, stepping back. “It is a punishment, or… a last resort. When a man or woman commits a heinous crime, one can… heap upon them the suffering they caused. Through bloodshed and scars, they… torment the victim.”

“As it should,” I said, but Gand’s face grew grim.

“I can feel your remorse. Your grief. I can see your heart. They threatened you and your father. They were far from innocent, and you… did not act in malice.”

“But I made no attempt at peace.” My demon-fire burned, wriggling in my blood. I bit my tongue, flushing red. “I… didn’t hesitate, splattering their guts across the street.”

“We do not fault the viper for striking first, protecting her brood. You carry Hell’s power, but it does not define you.”

I squirmed, unwilling to accept that. “I did it. It was my hands that were stained.”

“And yet it remains the Dead God’s will that forgiveness find a repentant heart.”

I took breath to protest, but instead bit my tongue. Speaking of these things… I realized how they had quickened my heart, made shallow my breath. Aryssa smoothed a hand over my arm, and as I met her eyes, something broke deep within. There, I began to cry.

It was not the open-mouthed, sniveling lament that had come that night in Gazmere. It was not the breathless, free-flowing rain that had been my farewell to my father. It was, in brief, a moment of vulnerability. Of baring my heart. How I had, hearing her song. How I had… knowing how she saw me. And as Aryssa wiped away my first silent tears, my cheeks flushed crimson-red.

It was some time before I realized it was not from shame.

Gand pulled me along, to a bedroll in the tent’s corner. He instructed me to sit, and I did so, reluctantly letting go of Aryssa’s gentle hand.

“Grief is… a complicated thing,” he said, sitting across from me. He pulled one of the censers closer to us, letting the smell waft more strongly into my nose. “It is necessary. It is the only path that leads to acceptance. Change comes, surely as the sunrise, and it is our duty as the living to embrace it. We may resist, we may lament… but that is only our nature. Grief changes our hearts just as an absence changes our world. And, as it lingers with us… so too does the love for what has been lost.”

He touched my scar again, pressing it as it burned. “Necromages and Dreamers are similar in some ways, and different in many more. But as far as I understand it, our goal is the same: not to dissipate grief, but to allow our patient to understand it. To accept it. To see it for what it is, and… to allow them to continue their lives. In making you a scapegoat, Azareth robbed those families of their grief, trapping it beneath your skin. He did not allow Gilgaroth to guide those seven men beyond… but forced their anger upon you. It would not be a stretch of logic to call a scapegoat… its own form of undead.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

“He delivered peace to no one. I do not know the reasons behind his actions. But it was not for the sake of the dead.”

My mouth felt very dry. I considered Azareth, his smiles, his masks, his many lies. And I realized the revelation didn’t find me the least bit surprised.

“A scapegoat can be made clean. With my help, you could… let go.”

“What about the woman’s spirit in my sword?” I asked, and he nodded slowly.

“I can guide you to her, once this part is done.”

“What do I need to do?”

He rose onto his knees, easing me back. “Lay down. Lay bare your scars. As the necromage carved them into your skin, allow me to… loosen their binds.”

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I removed my shirt and laid on my stomach, biting my tongue as the Dreamer ran his hands over every bump and gnarl. I looked to Aryssa in my vulnerability, and she tilted her head, running fingers through my hair. She bent down, kissed me between the horns, and offered a reassuring smile.

Gand placed the censer near my head. “Do you know anything of driftweed, Valhera?”

I shook my head, watching it burn.

“It was the Dead God’s final gift to our people. When he drove his sword into the earth and turned his body to dust, driftweed sprouted in his wake. Every petal, every thorn carries some measure of his power. Power to… tread beyond our mortal vale. To walk into dreams, thoughts, emotions, soul. Allow it to wash over you, through your breath and your blood. Give yourself into its power, and… allow me to be your guide.”

I breathed in deep, and peaceful memories surfaced in my mind. Memories of my father, our farm. The burn of my scars began to dull, and Gand’s voice faded to less than a whisper while my mind drifted into sleep.

* * *

I stood alone beneath the frigid rain. Water pooled on the road, running in little rivers as it washed over the sleeping town. The familiar streets of Gazmere greeted me, just as they had been that night.

In my hand, I held a length of steel. It felt heavy, unbearably heavy, and its tip scraped the cobblestone as I dragged it along. My attire did little to shut out the rain. My boots seemed to fill with water as my cloak became sodden through. Lightning cracked, and in its light, I saw the Lord Gazmere’s mansion. I saw the soaring shadow of the cathedral, where Elthys’s eyes forever watched. There was the jungle of wood and thatch from so many houses pressed together, and soon, I found myself in the central square.

Lightning flashed once again. Where my longsword dragged, it turned the rain to blood, a crimson current amid the freezing stream. I watched the torrent run, and my scars burned as fire.

A figure splashed forth from the shadows. A man, holding a butcher’s knife. I tried to raise my blade in defense, but found it far too heavy. Even so, the man dropped his weapon as he lifted it to swing. His torso erupted in a burst of blood as some invisible blade opened his abdomen. Wide-eyed, he clutched at his own entrails, then fell face-down into the muck.

Another appeared, swinging a rake at my head. I raised my hand in futile defense, but he too collapsed as a grievous wound punctured his chest. The crack and splinter of broken ribs… the squelch and sigh as his heart was rent. More splashing, and I turned to see a hatchet raised above my head, rapidly descending. He stumbled, missing his strike, and his eyes flashed in terror before his head sprang clear off his body.

Amid it all, the blood began to pool. My blade grew bloodier, gushing, until the rain itself took on its color.

Blood ran through my hair and clung to my skin. It soaked my clothes and blurred my eyes. Still, three more assailants advance. One jabbed with a pitchfork and missed by a hair’s breadth. The second raised his sword, but an invisible blade tore through his sternum and rendered him limp. The third swung an axe, but his skull burst like a sundered grape, blood and brains spilling where shards of bone fell.

The last had traded his anger for mortal, visceral fear. He fell to his knees, shivering in the blood rain. His head spun as it fell off. His hands seemed to reach out, to catch his tumbling body, but only managed a sad twitch before going limp.

My sword’s weight was unbearable, then. My scars were hot like the fires of Hell. I fell to my knees, unable to carry its burden, to suffer the burn of my deeds remembered.

Then, there were footsteps through the pooling blood. A hand outstretched. Looking up, I didn’t see Azareth’s barely-hidden smirk. I did not witness his horse, black-as-night, nor feel the haughty press of his presence.

Instead, the Dreamer stood, soft and solemn-eyed.

I took his hand. Where once the smells of blood and iron had overwhelmed my senses… now I felt the gentle chill of autumn’s breeze, blowing over the morning dew. I smelled the grass, the crumbling leaves, the faint hint of manure. I thought I felt my father nearby, and looking down, saw that Elegy’s mithril had replaced my butcher’s blade.

I thought of what the Dreamer had said, before I’d fallen into this dream. How the dead had been robbed of their peace. The living, their grief. I felt some mote of understanding, and as the Dreamer bowed his head, I walked toward the first man that had died.

I wrapped my reddened fingers around his ankle and pulled. Pieces of him dragged behind, left forgotten on the street, while his dead eyes seemed to watch me. The Dreamer followed as I navigated Gazmere’s streets, finding, at last, the place this corpse had called his home. The door opened of its own accord, and I stepped past the threshold.

The family was asleep, leaving me alone with the dead man. Still, I set him in a chair by the hearth-fire. Dripping red, his eyes gazed emptily at the flames. And, amid the commotion, one of his children seemed to wake.

He looked first to me, then to his dead father. His face twisted in anger, confusion, indignation… and, finally, grief. His child’s fists bounced off my torso, before he collapsed in a puddle of tears.

I left. I did the same for the next man, waking his widowed wife. She cursed my name, clawed hands tearing at my skin, before clutching his body tight.

Some of the men were heavier than others. Some… found gnawing grief in their death, a few, not as much. For the last, I carried the severed head under one arm, the body grasped in another. This time, the mourner’s wail shook the walls and rafters. This one, I knew, had lost a daughter the same day. And, even as my own grief ate me from within… I shut the door and stumbled into the street beyond.

In the square, I sat against a wall. The Dreamer sat with me, sinking into the blood that ran like rivers. I felt the crimson wash over me, cold and lifeless and heavy. And, somehow, it soaked into my skin, inch-by-inch quelling the fires that burned in my scars.

I cried, feeling the release. And my tears, warm and clear, carved rivets through the blood rain. I faced my sorrow, my sorrow at what I’d done… not the grief of an orphaned child or widowed bride, but the sorrow of innocence lost. The cold hand of regret. The resignation that… I had ceded to my demon within.

But I would parse those things in their own time. The Dreamer lifted Elegy’s blade, allowing me to look into its mithril. I blinked, looking to him, but found that he had disappeared. Alone once more, I looked into the metal and saw eyes, blue like my own… though framed by hair an impossible golden-blonde.

I lowered the sword, and the woman stood before me. She seemed unaffected by the falling rain, her hair maintaining its elegant waves. She wore a robe of silver and gold, adorned with lace and intricate stitching as befitting a Divine. She was beautiful—impossibly so. Her every movement carried implacable grace, her skin as soft as feathery down. Her eyes held kindness like the Mother’s, though something else shined in their depths. She held… sadness, deep within her. The sort of sorrow that stifles the body, slows the mind. She watched me, a wan smile spreading her lips… but that look faded into a thousand-yard stare.

Sepheline, I thought, and her head craned in a slow nod.

Mother? I asked, and she looked down as she shook her head.

Silence, between us. A hundred questions battled within me, tumultuous as the storm that had fallen over Gazmere. I didn’t know which to ask… or how to ask them. But, after some time, Sepheline came forward and knelt before me. She offered me her slender, delicate hand, and I grasped it. Her other hand raised Elegy’s length, for me to better see the images in its glare.

The landscape, reflected, started to shift. Gazmere’s wood and thatch became the capital’s red brick and white marble. Her life, long past, seeped into the blade. Her memories became my own, manifest as images in that silver-blue metal.

First, I saw a girl in her late adolescence. She had red hair and green eyes, freckles dotting every inch of her skin. She worked in one of Elthys’s temples, on track to become a Lady in White in her own time. Then, a cardinal of the Rising Sun came into her cathedral. The woman bore news of the Divine’s failing health… and that this budding priestess had been selected for a great and marvelous station.

So she became the next Divine. Her skin was rid of every blemish, her eyes and hair became like the Mother’s. She grew inches taller, face taking on its perfect form. She lost much of who she’d been. And yet… she had gained something else, something unfathomable.

The image faded, and I saw her in the passing years—a hundred little moments, a hundred little memories. The time her healing light had failed to save a sickly child. The first time she’d judged someone guilty of heresy and treason. I saw many memories with my father. His young face, absent the weather and wrinkles of many long years, surprised me. I felt what she had felt, for him. But the Divine was forbidden such things. They were only distractions from her greater purpose. I felt the agony as she’d dismissed him. The many nights thereafter, spent alone. The tears she’d shed, and… the knowledge that her own happiness was secondary to her duty to the goddess.

I felt how she’d struggled with her faith. How, despite how she offered Elthys’s light to others, she had struggled to find it in her own life. I saw her standing in the dark beneath the Order of Eventide’s temple. The Grandmasters told her that Elthys’s light was fading. She had felt the goddess growing more distant, but had thought it only due to her lacking faith.

They told her of a coming end. The end of everything. How, absent the power of the twin gods, the world could not govern itself. Death would become undeath, and in time, that too would fade.

She shuddered, knitting her hands. Next, a private moment. She’d felt that the coming doom… was her fault alone. And, in that moment, she looked like a girl again. Despite her otherworldly beauty, she seemed… young, naive, afraid. Powerless, despite her divine power. Then, she found a bitter acceptance. She resigned herself to watching the world die.

The next memory was vivid. She held a baby in her arms. Her face seemed weathered by hard years, but old in mind rather than body. She rocked the infant and listened to its cries… all while reading over a note left in the cradle.

It said that this child was the key to it all. The only one who could subvert the coming calamity, should she prove so wise to Elthys’s light. She had found the child within Elthys’s inner sanctum—Elthysia’s holiest place where only the Divine and the Mother may tread. She took it… as a gift from the goddess. One final hope. And, indeed, she felt some inkling of the Mother’s power within it… despite the tiny horns poking from its skull, the tail that wriggled within the swaddling cloth.

She named the infant Valhera after one of the first Divines so that she might more easily carry the goddess’s light, much like her forebears. And yet… it was not long before she was found. It was forbidden to take a child as the Divine, and a direling no less. So, with a small retinue of her most loyal knights, she fled the capital city in search of the man she had loved.

I knew the rest. I was delivered, and she was killed. Her memories faded from my mind, and we sat once more on the sodden streets of Gazmere.

Her eyes were puffy and red as she wiped her tears away. She held both of my hands in her own, begging, pleading for me to succeed where she had failed. To discover my own purpose, how to save the world.

She had held the world on her shoulders and been powerless. In the end… she hadn’t helped anyone, saved anyone. Despite her faith in Elthys, her fathomless power… she hadn’t been able to prevent her people from suffering. She couldn’t stop the world from continuing toward calamity. So I, a horned, tailed, newborn, had given her hope. Maybe it was foolish… but it was all that she’d had. I was all that she’d had, so she’d gladly given her life for my sake.

I wondered at the note, found in my cradle. I knew that no one could see the future. That was a tenet of Elthys’s doctrine, and yet… there was an air of prophecy about all of this. But Sepheline assured me. It was the light within me that would mend what was broken, not my predestination.

So, with her, I tried to understand. I tried to comprehend the things she had shown me.

But Gazmere faded to darkness. Her body faded with it. I heard her plea, one last time, to finish what she could not.

Then I was awake.

* * *

Aryssa and I sat together near our favorite spot on the riverbank. The sun was setting low above the western plains, and I found myself fighting to stay awake. It was strange, I thought—dreams could render sleep all the more restless, or all the more rejuvenating. I hadn’t said much since leaving the Dreamer’s tent, taking my time to understand the things that I’d been shown.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Aryssa asked. I sighed, resting my head on her shoulder.

“I… don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“A lot happened.” She ran her hand over my back, and I found that my scars didn’t burn so hotly. I still carried them and remembered the whip’s fire, but they had taken on a different burn.

“Tell me about it,” she said.

I took a deep breath, closing my eyes to recall the images Sepheline had shown me. I described them to Aryssa. How I’d been found in Elthys’s inner sanctum, how the Divine had carried me to my father even at her own peril. The message left in my cradle, and Sepheline’s resolve that I could save the world where she had failed. It came out in a rush, and I found my words tripping over themselves to tell her all.

When I was done, she sat in silence for a few moments. “Black Blood, that’s a lot to take in. She said you had… Elthys’s light?”

“She did. And I remember the Order of Eventide saying something similar.”

“And you tell me you’re nothing more than a girl from a farm.”

I sighed, deflating and sinking more fully into her embrace. “How could I be anything more?”

“I’m kidding, Val. But… for me, at least, this dream of yours has only prompted more questions.”

“You and me, both.”

“Then… has the trail gone cold?”

I watched the river run, the sunlight reflected off its rippling surface. “I suppose it has.”

“Are you okay with that?”

I wasn’t. But where before I had held a burning desire to discover the mysteries of my past… now, it had dulled. I still wanted to know. Who I was, where I came from… why I had this demon-fire within. But Sepheline had been my only lead. And with Aryssa, I was beginning to realize that… such answers are not always the key. Not all of the heart’s great questions demanded resolution.

So I shrugged. She didn’t respond a while, hands running through my tangle of hair.

“What about Azareth?”

I shut my eyes. “What about him?”

“Becoming a scapegoat is a… horrible curse.” There was an edge in her voice, almost suppressed, though sharp like I’d never witnessed before.

“It’s over and dealt with, I suppose.”

“That’s it?”

“What, Ari, do you want me to storm that fort he’s holed up in and break his jaw?”

Her tail thumped against the ground. “It’d be a start.”

“I don’t know. I don’t quite understand.”

“I thought Gand explained it in rather plain terms—”

“Then I don’t understand why,” I growled, fingers tensing like claws. “He said it was to cleanse the town. But it seems that was another one of his lies.”

“Maybe to keep you in his debt. Maybe just for the hell of it.”

“A sadist would make a poor necromage.”

She only offered a conceding shrug. In the quiet, I thought about Azareth’s deeds.

I remembered his calculating eyes, his arrogant smiles… and felt anger, for a moment. But I was tired. I had faced my demons once today, less than an hour before, and didn’t have the conviction to face them again. Even so, my thoughts festered.

I had agreed to his plan because I had thought I’d had no choice. I’d thought… he was saving my life, my soul. And he had not harmed me since. Regardless, I felt that I had been right to never give him my unconditional trust… perhaps reinforced by his eagerness to fuel my demon-fire.

“I… have an idea,” Aryssa said, a welcome distraction from my thoughts.

“What kind of idea?”

“There’s a place, near here,” she said, looking to the east. “The Ebon Grove. It’s the place where Gilgaroth is said to have ended his life, all those years ago. It’s where our kind can feel his power the strongest. Some even say… that he visits them in their dreams, should they sleep among the driftweed gardens.”

I met her eyes and found a peculiar expression on her face. It was not worry, but… something adjacent. “You think it could shed some light on my situation?”

“I’m not alone in saying that I see… no, I feel his power within you. And our conversation the other day has had me thinking. You asked me about faith, and, well… the Ebon Grove is where many direlings find theirs.”

I laced my fingers with hers. “You told me faith need not be in a god.”

She smiled, stroked my hair, and bent down to kiss me. We parted, and she had a faraway look in her eye.

“I think we should go,” she said. “I’m not one of the Dead God’s faithful disciples, but it’s undeniable that the place holds a certain power.”

“How far is it?”

“Two days. We could pack light.”

“Do we have time?”

“Azareth’s been cooped up in that fort long enough. I would think it only fair that he allow us our own detour.”

“Only… you and me. It could be fun.”

Her smile returned, as did my own. “Then we’ll leave tomorrow morning,” she said, and I looked once more to the river’s myriad waves.

Still burdened by the affairs of the day, it didn’t take me long to fall into slumber.