Rova 17, 4719

Some River, Mwangi

Noon

Today took a bit of a turn.

We took the canoes downriver, intending to reach the elephant people’s village, but after just a few miles we spotted a large boat moored to a tree, and I guess curiosity won out.

We pulled ashore to have a look. Whoever had been there had stomped off to the north, leaving a trail that even I could follow. Iskaryn went ahead to scout it out, and while we waited for her to return, Gath poked around the boat and found a small bundle wrapped in oiled canvas. 

Inside were a handful of journals from some self-aggrandizing explorer, a number of gold idols, and various small treasures. We were actually surprised to see gold, but Renali pointed out that it’s just the Ekujae elves that consider it taboo. Then she said something else interesting.

“There are old ruins everywhere. You can find things like these if you’re willing to go digging through someone else’s shrine for them.”

I didn’t think much of this at the time.

When Iskaryn returned, she said the trail led to a clearing with a number of bodies in it. The only one still moving was a human man trying, and failing, to transport a large object also wrapped in oiled canvas. An object about the right shape and size to be a dragon pillar.

We waited for a bit, and when he didn’t turn up, we figured he wasn’t making much progress. We didn’t want to sit out here all day, so we went to meet him.

And it was a lot worse than “not much progress”: it was essentially “no progress”, and he beamed at us when we appeared, introducing himself as Gerhard Pendergast in a tone that suggested we were lucky to come along just in time to help.

Or, almost in time. Iskaryn hadn’t really been specific about what she’d seen. There were dead Cinderclaws behind him, yes, but also several stone statues that looked eerily lifelike.

This pillar was quite a bit nastier than the one we had dealt with a couple of days ago.

I guess we were supposed to recognize Gerhard, because he looked disappointed when we didn’t. So he started telling us, in case it jogged our memories or something, and finally Liberte interrupted him and said, “Do you know how dangerous that thing is you’re carrying?”

And, I mean, he obviously did, since the statuary behind him was made from his porters and assistants. He just didn’t know the whole of it.

“Well, not anymore. My lads disabled it, you see.” And I think I can just leave that there.

Liberte pressed him on the pillar itself. “Do you know what it is?”

“Why it’s…it’s a rare jungle totem…that I have taken from this…er…site—”

I cut him off. “In other words, ‘No.’”

We pointed out that this was the third one of these we’d come across, and they did a bit more than just defend themselves. Which set him off again like we were competing with him for some museum exhibit or something, and trying to cut into the fortune he planned to make from it. And, obviously, that was the last thing on our minds: we just wanted to disable the damned thing without coming to blows over it. 

Then someone has the brilliant idea of agreeing to help him carry it, and a few of us step up to do that. And just as they get some momentum, Liberte lets his end slip from his grasp at just the right time, and the pillar falls to the ground just so, and then splits down the center.

Problem solved.

He was obviously upset over this, but there are spells for that, and museums do this sort of thing all the time (how they decide between restoring something with labor, restoring with magic, or not restoring at all is a mystery to me, but I assume they know their business). Fix it, not fix it, we just didn’t care.

And I didn’t think much of that at the time, either.

But now something is nagging at me. The whole time we were talking, or perhaps arguing, with the man, he kept referring to his “discovery”. And then there were his journals, which Gath had read excerpts from aloud, and they were full of words like “discovered” and “rescued” and “recovered”. And so on.

I’ve been to museums. When I was sixteen, my parents took me to an exhibit called Music Before Earthfall, which had a collection of ancient Azlanti instruments. I still remember the wave harp. It was this strange thing with three vertical rods made of mithral, and you didn’t even touch them to play it. You plucked at the air between them, and somehow it produced musical notes. And next to it was this little placard that said something like “Wave Harp, Late Azlanti period. Recovered from the submerged remains of…” someplace. I don’t remember where.

But there was that word “recovered”.

A couple of years later, I was at another exhibition, Songs of the Pharaohs, about the music of ancient Osirion, and I remember seeing a ceremonial harp. And it, too, had this placard that read, “Recovered from a tomb outside Sothis…”, and it was on loan from some private collection in Oppara, which is in Taldor. 

And again, there was that word, “recovered”.

And I didn’t think much of those at the time, either. But now I think back to what Renali said earlier, about digging through others’ shrines to find these little golden idols. And then there’s Pendergast “discovering” this dragon totem.

He’s writing those little placards in real time.

And worse, he doesn’t even know what they are.

And now I’m looking at those placards in my head, and well, they can really just say anything, can’t they? And what does “recovered” really mean?

Night

Late in the day, we caught glimpses of a small group in the distance that appeared to be tracking us. Which was probably not difficult to do, because we weren’t going out of our way to hide our passage. Kind of the opposite, really: we were dragging the canoes behind us as portage. You couldn’t not track us.

Our trail was so clumsy that we figured an ambush had good odds of working. And, as hard as this is to believe, I played a significant part in our audacious plan.

I knew I could weave magic into my music and captivate an audience—the weaker the will, the easier it was—and even influence their actions. It’s the sort of thing you just don’t do in polite company, but this little meeting would be miles from polite. We found a suitable clearing in a copse of trees to make camp, and Tarsius and I sat together in the open while the others disappeared into the woods along the approach.

We were the bait.

I played something soft and airy while we waited. When four boggards and one charau-ka came into view, I wove the magic into it, and ensnared every one of them.

It wasn’t perfect. There were more boggards that I couldn’t see, and two of the five broke free when my friends started picking them off, but I held the rest.

And then it occurred to me that we had more options than fighting them.

I turned to the first in line, pushed more magic into the music, and said, “Run home.” They resisted, but the next two didn’t. One at a time, they took off into the jungle as fast as their legs would carry them.

It seemed pretty clever at the time, but in retrospect, maybe it wasn’t the best idea. We’re not here to merely inconvenience the Cinderclaws: we’re here to eliminate them. Which sounds horrible, sure, but it’s also true that they are horrible people who worship a horrible god, with horrible plans for the rest of us. So there’s not a lot to love there. But sending them on an hours-long journey made things easier on us, and there’s still this part of me that would rather avoid this sort of violence when we can. Two boggards likely won’t make a difference in the end. And no one is upset with me. More the opposite, really. So I don’t know what the right thing was. Maybe there isn’t one.

We kept one of the boggards for questioning. From him (I think he was a him; I don’t know, and I didn’t ask), we learned a few things we had suspected—they knew we had disabled the green pillar and came looking for us—and quite a bit we didn’t know at all.

There are still a red, orange, yellow, and indigo pillar out there, somewhere. That indigo one is a bit speculative, since he wasn’t too good with colors, but we’re just going to run with “indigo” for simplicity’s sake. There was also a strange comment that suggested “colored walls” of some sort, though he wasn’t clear on that either.

Both the gold mine and their fortress are upriver. While that doesn’t exactly narrow things down, this lot was dispatched from the fortress, so the fortress can’t be more than a couple of days away at boggards-traveling-with-charau-ka speeds.

Their high priestess is named Belmazog, but we got little else about her. The boggards seem to be nothing more than muscle, and all he could tell us was that she was the smartest of all of them. Though that doesn’t tell us much, either, since it seems like that’s a low bar to clear.

When we were done, we let him go.

And I don’t know if that was the right thing, either.

Rova 19, 4719

Some Village, Some River, Mwangi

Late Morning

Iskaryn is feeling very proud of herself. Normally, that kind of comment from me would be followed by several lines of exasperated snark, but this time? She earned it.

We were seeking out the elephant people. That name is not as exciting as it sounds. My understanding is that this isn’t even what they call themselves, and it’s just a term the Ekujae use for them because they live near a herd of elephants. Apparently, neither the elephants nor the people are particularly friendly, but the two seem to get along with each other—however that works when you live next to wild animals, especially ones that are both aggressive and capable of knocking over mature trees, without them killing you—so the Ekujae just put the two names together. Hence, elephant people.

We found their village. Or rather, what was left of it: the entire place had been burned to the ground. The only structure left standing was a small stone well. Everything else was just charred timber collapsed into heaps on scorched earth.

We immediately suspected Cinderclaws, because who else would do this? That was confirmed when we saw the crushed remains of two charau-ka.

See above about unfriendly elephants.

Unfortunately, two of said elephants were still here, and they were not thrilled to have visitors. We would have just turned around and left—the whole point of coming here was to talk to these people; no people, no talk—but then we heard someone crying for help underneath one of the piles of rubble.

It’s difficult to rescue someone when you’re being charged by elephants, or so I imagine. Qantrip stepped forward to try to calm them, and I wove a bit of magic into my music to help, but it only seemed to make them angrier. Everyone’s a critic.

That’s when Iskaryn darted forward. I both heard and felt it when her birdsong started because she pulled on my magic.

And the elephants just stopped.

It’s what I’d done a couple of days ago with the boggards. But this was Iskaryn doing it. Iskaryn. We’d passed a song back and forth to strengthen my friends before, but this was different. She just…took over, and changed it. Used it the way I had.

My lasting image of this is a small, indigo bird staring down two elephants a hundred times her size.

I couldn’t believe it. I kind of still don’t.

Later, I asked her, “How did you know you could do that?”

“I didn’t,” she said. “But it seemed like a good time to try.”

My friends managed to free the trapped villager, and he was able to calm the elephants once Iskaryn dropped her song.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have anything to tell us that we didn’t already know. But I’ll accept “probably saved his life” as a good reason for coming here.

Rova 12, 4719

Akrivel

Morning

It didn’t take long to realize that a jungle is not merely a hot, wet forest. It is a dizzyingly complicated ecosystem that’s teeming with life, from the canopy to the forest floor. It is layer upon layer upon layer upon layer. It’s not a place, but a thousand places, all woven together.

Kyira gave voice to the obvious: If we were to walk into this thing and have any hope of coming back out alive, we needed a guide.

“We need a guide”, she said.

The Ekujae couldn’t provide one. Even getting within a few miles of these totems rendered them blind. Fortunately, before we parted ways, Renali had offered to guide us. The Ekujae knew where her village was, so it was just a matter of getting in touch with her.

“Iskaryn, do you think you could find Renali?” I asked.

“Certainly,” she said.

I naively thought this simple exchange would stop there, and she’d fly off. I was wrong.

“Maybe she can drop a note to them,” Kyira said.

Then Trip chimed in. “Can’t your bird just talk to anybody it wants to now?”

Iskaryn fluttered down and gave me a pointed look. “What does ‘your goblin’ mean by ‘your bird’?”

This sort of thing is why Trip keeps making jokes about roasted bird.

Afternoon

Renali said she would meet us here tomorrow. I thought it would be just an uneventful day in the village—there is nothing wrong with uneventful—but Liberte had other ideas. He had been studying the gold bar we found near Huntergate, and learned it was thoroughly tainted with arsenic.

He explained that it can occur naturally in the raw ore. It’s removed during the refining process, long before it would ever be formed into gold bars like the one we found. No one would knowingly wear jewelry or carry coins laced with poison.

This turned into an interesting conversation with Akosa, who I learned had been held captive by an Aspis Consortium operation and forced to work in one of their gold mines. It explained a great deal about why he’s been terse with us. Perhaps all of it.

Akosa explained why most of the Ekujae didn’t wear any gold, and it had nothing to do with arsenic: it’s simply taboo. Their ancestors fought Dahak and somehow imprisoned him inside Alseta’s Ring with some ancient ritual, long forgotten. They believe his blood spilled over the land here, became gold once it cooled, and is now cursed by his nature. This taint is why people covet gold, and are willing to spill blood and take lives just to have more of it. 

The only exception is the keledi. They swear their lives to fighting Dahak should he ever return, and wear gold not as a sign of wealth, but as a sign that they are worthy. “That their very souls”, as Akosa put it, “can cut the flesh of a god”.

I grew up around gold; we had quite a lot of it when I was young (when I was older, not so much). It’s pretty much everywhere in Druma. I understand his point, but wealth takes many forms, and gold is only one of them. Removing gold from society doesn’t actually solve anything: people who are greedy or desperate enough will always find something worth killing for.

But then again, my family was destroyed by gold. In my home country, the people in power wear white to show their purity—abundantly adorned with gold jewelry—and long, white gloves so they don’t bespoil themselves by touching the unworthy. Otherwise known as “regular people”. It’s difficult not to see gold as a symbol.

So is gold tainted by the nature of Dahak? Maybe.

Or maybe it’s just tainted with arsenic.

Rova 13, 4719

Mwangi

Evening

I was thinking of the jungle as more of an endless rainforest, but it’s not really like that at all. There are trees, of course (just see Akrivel for proof of that), only they appear in groves rather than large stretches of land. Most of it is a dense tangle of underbrush, with plants so thick you can’t walk through them without clearing your own path ahead of you. The sun beats down on everything, and all this vegetation tries to crowd out its neighbors to get as much of it as it can.

And there are insects everywhere. This is not hyperbole. I have never seen so many insects at one time ever in my life. It’s apparent why the Ekujae gifted us with mosquito nettings and cautioned us to ensure our tents were completely enclosed in them at night. If only mosquitoes were the only bugs we had to worry about.

Renali pointed out that a common mistake people make when first entering the jungle is assuming that the biggest threat is from large predators. Yes, large predators will certainly kill and eat you if given the chance, but the more pervasive dangers are toxins and disease, delivered in the form of insects and reptiles, or just eating the wrong food. It’s humbling to realize that you can die from an insect that you didn’t even know bit you several days earlier.

As for Renali, she is traveling in what she calls her natural form: a humanoid spider. She actually asked us if this was OK first, because the Anadi have learned that humans are not always comfortable around spiders, much less human-sized ones, much less ones that literally look like people and spiders meeting halfway. That is a fair assessment, but after you’ve seen a skinless rider-and-horse monstrosity, it raises the bar for what you consider disturbing. A bipedal spider just doesn’t register.

The others didn’t seem bothered, either. Honestly, we’d seen worse in our first week in Breachill. Which, uh, sounds like I’m insulting the place where I live. I’m not. We just happened to stumble into some unusual events.

Entirely by coincidence, I’m sure.

Rova 14, 4719

Mwangi

Evening

Nketiah warned us that there were fey in this part of the jungle. Today we met one of them.

I am not under any illusions about the fey. There are a few that seek out humanity out of genuine curiosity, but most simply do not share our values. Their motivations range from inscrutable to entirely alien, and that makes them dangerous almost by happenstance: the boundary of a fey’s territory is as likely to be a rock half buried in the soil as it is something obvious like a stream or tree line. Others see us as inconvenient, entertainment, or outright prey. The malevolent ones will often combine the latter two.

It is not surprising that the most alluring of them tend to be the most dangerous. And that brings us to today.

We were tracking the Cinderclaws through the brush—the grauladons left quite the trail—when Gath came across a trail of freshly spilled blood. He decided to follow it. Someone will need to remind me why we thought this was a good idea.

What he found was a self-proclaimed hunter carrying a large sack over his shoulders. It was still dripping with blood. 

He was a very handsome man. And I want to point out that I meet a lot of attractive men and women, and normally don’t feel compelled to write it down. So when I say “he was a handsome man”, it means something.

He claimed that he had just killed a bird. Not long ago, we had fought two birds about the size of the lump in his sack, so it all seemed on the level to me. Gath, however, was suspicious.

I handled the translation between Taldan and Mwangi.

“Can we see the bird?” Gath asked. “We’re awfully interested in the local fauna.” 

“Uh, no. It will escape if I open the bag. But you can see one of its magnificent feathers,” he said. He then held up a large, fluorescent orange feather which did not look like any bird I knew.

But I don’t live here, so I threw the question to Renali, in Taldan. “Any birds in this jungle have bright, orange feathers?”

“Not that I am aware of,” she answered.

Which made me suspicious, too.

Some of my friends came up to investigate, and as they approached him, I could see them fall under his influence. One by one, their suspicions simply…faded. Trip and I stayed where we were. I didn’t know exactly how close I could get to him, and I was in no hurry to find out.

Real horror is not a monster. It’s watching your friends succumb to supernatural charms.

The creature discovered Gath spoke Sylvan. A few quiet words later, Gath did something extraordinary and terrifying. He set his bow on the ground, and calmly walked away.

Then Kyira recognized the feather: it belonged to an angel. She and Tarsius surrounded him, unaffected by his presence. His head swiveled, revealing a hyena’s face, and it attacked.

The violence shattered the enchantment on everyone. Everyone but Gath. He just kept walking.

As the others closed in on the creature, I sent Iskaryn after Gath. “Keep an eye on him!” I shouted. The thought of him wandering alone through the jungle—that we might lose him out there—was even more frightening than what we were fighting.

Both Trip and Marcus tried to break the enchantment on him, but neither could.

Finally, Trip yelled out, “Gath! Tarsius has been killed! We need your help! Now!”

It wasn’t true, but it didn’t matter. I watched him stop. Then he turned around.

The creature, which we later identified as a kishi, was surrounded by our warriors, but the killing blow came not from their blades, but a cold iron arrow.

Shot by Gath.

He looked at Trip and Marcus and said, “I will remember what you tried to do.”

We cut open the sack. Inside was not a bird, but a wounded angel with wings of bright orange feathers. Trip stabilized him before the kishi’s work could claim him.

He introduced himself as Choima, and thanked us for freeing him. Choima explained that he’d been traveling to the Magaambya with materials needed to break a curse, and apologized that he couldn’t stay. The mission had already been delayed long enough. We said our good-byes, and he took flight, disappearing to the south.

We gathered what little the kishi had left behind, found a place to make camp, and tried to put the day behind us.

Sleep did not come easily.

Rova 15, 4719

Mwangi

Evening

We encountered our first dragon pillar this afternoon. We’re calling them that because they are pillars topped with a carved dragon head, and there’s no reason to overcomplicate the name.

This one poisoned Gath. We are lucky that he is still alive.

So lucky that I am not even sure how he’s still alive, because it just doesn’t seem possible that he survived. It was that close.

It happened so quickly I only pieced it together afterward. The thick underbrush broke into a clearing of tall grasses with a small copse of trees, and the pillar was planted roughly in the center. Two bodies were hanging upside-down from the trees, which naturally put us on edge. We kept behind the taller vegetation while Gath and Qantrip crept forward through the brush to try and get a better look at it.

That’s when they spotted the drakes perched in the trees. Then something triggered it, and a beam of green light shot out from the pillar and struck Gath. He crawled his way back to us but looked horribly ill, his skin pale, his breathing strained and ragged, and sweat breaking out across his forehead.

Then the drakes took to the air and came for us, and our attention was split between surviving the attack and saving Gath. Arrows flew and blades slashed as the drakes descended on us. And every few seconds someone would glance back at Gath. Was he still breathing? Was the poison getting worse? Did anyone have another idea?

Then Marcus cried out as one of the drakes stung him while flying by. Now we had another poisoned companion to worry about. Kyira used a restorative spell to keep Gath alive while Marcus scrambled for an antitoxin. Neither of them was looking good.

One of the drakes went down, crashing into the ground, dead. I put an arrow in the other—a shot that it will remember for a very long time—and it took off to the west. 

But Gath was still dying. Marcus was getting weaker.

And all I could do was stand there and watch it happen.

I was sure Gath was gone, but Kyira managed a second restorative spell that I swear was too late…and he stabilized. His breaths were ragged and shallow, but he was still alive. The poison must have run its course.

Marcus was still struggling, though. We broke out the healer’s kit and more antitoxin, and still he fought not just to stay upright, but to even stay awake.

Eventually, he, too, stabilized.

But the dragon pillar was still there. Waiting. Two of our friends were down, and we hadn’t even gotten close to it.

That’s when I noticed what Renali had done during the fight. She had made herself invisible, crossed to the trees, and cut the charau-ka body down. The pillar hadn’t targeted her. And that gave us a way forward. I cast my own invisibility spell on Trip, and she used a flight spell to cross the clearing and drop a sack over the dragon pillar’s head.

That is all it took. It seemed so ridiculously simple, but I’ll take simple, ridiculously or otherwise. 

We studied it for a while before Gath figured out how to disrupt its magic for good. It is completely inert now. 

He’s currently hacking the dragon’s head to pieces.

No one is stopping him.

Rova 16, 4719

Some River, Mwangi

Afternoon

We’re camping by the river that Nketiah told us about while Gath and Marcus recover. There’s not really much for me to do here (I don’t have restorative magic beyond healing wounds), so my thoughts have turned back to the dragon pillar.

When Qantrip studied the white one over by Huntergate a couple of days back, she said, “This thing is a focus for magic energy. It funnels occult ritual magic, amplifies, sends it to a point far away, powers something there.” So the Cinderclaws are using these pillars to power something important. And that means they need the pillars, which means the pillars need to be defended.

Blinding the Ekujae elves was a logical choice, since they and the Cinderclaws are in direct opposition to one another. Nketiah said the Cinderclaws hold a grudge against the elves because they trapped Dahak between worlds long ago. So, keeping the elves from interfering, or even investigating, makes a lot of sense.

But more things live in the jungle than the Ekujae, and the Cinderclaws cannot assume the elves are the only threat. So the pillars can defend themselves. The green one proved that quite effectively.

The problem with that, though, is that it’s still a pillar. It can’t move, can’t think, can’t pursue anyone, and can’t adapt to when someone does something unexpectedly clever—like putting a sack over its head.

That is what the guards are for.

The more I think about the guards, though, the less the arrangement makes sense. There were two bodies hanging from that tree: a boggard and a charau-ka. Every sentient Cinderclaw cultist we’ve met so far has been one of those two. One of them wore enchanted armor dyed deep red, which just screams “Cinderclaws” to me. So these must have been the guards, or at least part of them.

So why were they dead? And how do the drakes fit in?

I am not entirely unfamiliar with drakes. We’d get them occasionally around Macridi—The Forest’s Drake didn’t just choose that name for the clever wordplay—and though they were generally smart enough not to tangle with the city, that is not the same thing as being smart. And, certainly, no one I knew ever accused drakes of being reasonable. They are impatient and prone to violence.

So why were there two drakes, a dead boggard, and a dead charau-ka sitting in those trees? I can think of two possibilities. The first is that the Cinderclaws intentionally paired them up, and that pairing…went poorly. The second is that the drakes weren’t sent by the Cinderclaws at all: they just came along and found the guards to be a tasty snack. They weren’t guarding the pillar. They were guarding their meal.

Except the pillar didn’t attack them. And presumably it wouldn’t attack its own guards. So maybe there’s something the pillar “sees” that lets it recognize an ally. Maybe whatever marks a creature as dangerous to the pillar does not include drakes. Or maybe the same magic that made this pillar poisonous also made poisonous creatures seem harmless to it.

I don’t know. That last one feels like a stretch.

Or maybe it’s not. Maybe the pillars are capable of more reasoning than I thought.

Night

Or. Maybe it’s a dragon pillar, and drakes are dragons.

Rova 9, 4719

Citadel Altaerein

Afternoon

The stairs to the lower level have been rebuilt, and we cleared the rubble from the stairwell that descends to Alseta’s Ring. Which is a lengthy, boring way of saying we no longer have to spend half a day crawling through six miles of caves just to reach it. 

Easy access to the Ring means we can spend time studying it and hopefully make sense of what we’re seeing.

I’ll be honest: I am not our group’s expert when it comes to magic. I am no slouch and can certainly do some study and research, but when you really want to understand, oh, say, ancient elven teleportation rings, you probably want to talk to Qantrip. And after that, everyone else. And then me.

We started by just getting a good look at everything. The first time we were down here, we were a little preoccupied with not dying, and after that, getting past Raldar again (also without dying), then getting back to town. Now, we could take our time.

Of the six gates, only five were still standing. We didn’t need magic to tell us that the Lotusgate would never work again. If the burned-out husk of the former way station wasn’t enough to convince you, the half-melted archway would do it.

Dreamgate shimmered like clouds, with butterflies and stars worked into the stone. Duskgate felt warm despite being deep underground. Vengegate was not even decorated at all, or at least it seemed that way at first. Then someone pointed out it was covered with tiny carvings of wasps. I wish they hadn’t; now I can’t stop seeing them. Jewelgate looked like someone decided you just can’t have enough crystals.

And then there was Huntergate. Hawks, moons, and jungle vines were carved into the arch, all sacred to Ketephys, the elven god of the hunt. This was the one that we needed to go through. The one we needed to fix.

It didn’t take long to figure out what needed to be done here. The best way I can describe it is that the gate was out of tune. Apparently “out of alignment” is the more accurate term, but “out of tune” makes more sense to me. We can use the gate key—the arrowhead the Cinderclaws brought with them—to adjust it. It would just take time and patience.

That was the easy part. The hard part…

“Do we want to inform the council?” I asked.

The last time we discussed this, we couldn’t come to a consensus. About the only thing we did agree on was we weren’t saying anything to anyone until we secured the Ring and figured out how it worked. Well, as of that moment, both of those conditions had been met. So we called for a vote.

“I vote for telling the council,” I said. “We tell them the Cinderclaws came through a teleportation device that’s in our citadel, and that we intend to go through it ourselves to deal with the rest of them.”

Not everyone agreed. Kyira wanted to add that this is our citadel, and that no one else has the right to come in here to investigate or study it. And that the council shouldn’t share the knowledge of its existence with anyone else.

It wasn’t until we got to Trip, though, that the vote got really complicated.

“A witch votes ‘no’—at least not all of the council. Not that woman especially. The head woman, Greta, only is ok.”

“That woman” is Amera Lang. She’s the operations manager for Posandi Bros., one of the two masons we hired to repair our walls. They’re owned by town councilor Quentino Posandi.

Trip spent several days looking into the members of the council because she has a healthy dose of paranoia. That sounds pejorative, but it’s not. Yes, most of the time it’s exhausting. But then she’ll notice something the rest of us missed, and suddenly it doesn’t seem so excessive.

Posandi Bros. is a family business in the most extreme sense of the term. Literally everyone who works there is either family or married into it. And Trip did not like them. We didn’t hire them to rebuild the stairs for that reason. Trip didn’t want Amera, or anyone else from Posandi Bros., inside the citadel.

Greta Gardania used to run Lamond’s Lament. When she became council president, she handed it over to Renatta. Watching her, it’s hard not to think Greta sees being council president as just another way of taking care of people.

“I’ll support just telling Greta,” I said. 

One by one, we all agreed.

Night

We were able to meet with Greta in private late this afternoon. I ended up as spokesperson for what was likely to be an uncomfortable conversation.

“The Council asked us to deal with the Cinderclaws, and ensure they’re no longer a threat. Here’s what we’ve learned…” I said.

I explained that they had come through a teleportation gate beneath what was now our citadel—I specifically used that wording, “our citadel”—and caused extensive damage inside the structure. That the group got split in two, with neither able to reach the other. Then, about the caves, Voz’s involvement, and us finally reaching the Ring.

Greta looked increasingly tense. I couldn’t blame her. 

“We’ve rebuilt the stairs and cleared out the rubble,” I said, “so we now have access to the gate. We believe we know how to repair it and activate it. And to fulfill our contract, we need to go through it.”

“And you control this teleportation gate now, not them?” she asked.

“We have the device they used to activate the gate. It is uniquely coded. And we believe it’s the only one.” I took in a deep breath, then added, “We need you to keep this quiet.”

Greta looked relieved. Which made no sense to me. There was nothing about this that should have been relieving. “I was going to talk to you about this,” she said. “I’m glad you came to me.”

What?

She continued. “Voz said something troubling to me as she was being transferred to Elidir. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing, trusting those people you barely know! I bet they didn’t tell you that underneath their castle is a gate that’s controlled by a foreign cartel, and they’re going to invade!’”

This has been what I was worried about from the start. But I figured it would be Calmont that would eventually convince someone the Ring existed. I never imagined Voz would say something just to spite us and sow division.

It was foolish of me not to have considered that possibility.

I chose my next words carefully. “So…much of that is accurate. There is a gate below the castle. The Cinderclaws were planning to invade through it. I…wouldn’t call them a cartel…”

“I just assumed she was lying—”

“She had financial backers to help set up her assassination guild and necromancy school. Those backers, they gave her that money because she promised them access to the gate.”

“That’s my concern. If they’re already in control of this thing—” 

“But they’re not. We are.”

And then I explained everything we had pieced together. The Hellknights somehow managed to build their castle on top of a millennia-old elf gate. Voz learned about a breach in the caves that led to it, and hatched this plan to sell access to it once she took control of it. Calmont found Voz’s notes and hatched his own plan to get there first. And then the Cinderclaws came through the gate at just the right time to upend everything.

“Voz was backed by a group called The Scarlet Triad, who are working through a business called Tabir’s Exotic Wares in Kintargo. But she never reached the gate herself. She’s taking pieces of the truth, and assembling a story that sounds alarming.”

Of course, the existence of five teleportation gates, one of which was functional and the other four potentially so, was alarming enough.

“So this cartel could be in control of some of them,” Greta said.

“Yes,” I admitted. “But as far as we know, none of the other gates have opened in millennia. Though we can’t prove that.”

To our relief, Greta agreed to keep the knowledge of Alseta’s Ring, and our plans to travel through Huntergate to confront the remaining Cinderclaws, to herself.

For now.

Rova 10, 4719

Citadel Altaerein

Late Afternoon

We were able to retune Huntergate. Everything after that was a disaster.

The two charau-ka are dead. We agreed to take them home, and we tried, but they never made it.

It’s not our fault. I know that. We didn’t promise to protect them. I know that too. But we were the means of getting them home, and that means is what got them killed. We didn’t know. No one could have known. And I can’t convince myself that this matters.

 

Iskaryn could have died in there.

 

And I should thank Magdh that she didn’t, because she and Renali got out a split second before the tunnel, or tube, or whatever in the Nine Hells you call that place, erupted in flames.

 

Iskaryn just said, “Enough.”

She’s right.

Rova 11, 4719

Citadel Altaerein

Morning

The waystation wasn’t there.

It’s not even a burned-out husk like Lotusgate’s—the one we walked through weeks ago. Huntergate’s is just gone.

The closest description I can think of is a lava tube. And it was hot. And it got hotter. Then this vision, or image, or phantasm of a dragon made of flames appeared, and we ran…

And not all of us made it out in time. The charau-ka never made it out at all.

Marcus says it looked like Dahak. He would know. He’s told us about his visions.

We think it’s a manifestation of him, or his aspect, or his power. Magdh, I don’t know how to describe it. It doesn’t matter.

Gath thinks we can…destroy it? Dissipate it? Turn its magic in on itself? I don’t know how any of that works, but I trust him. Qantrip and I will help him. Qantrip’s laughing is…unsettling…but it has this way of helping you focus if it’s done right. My part is to reinforce it with a calming, rhythmic chant.

I hope it’s enough.

But we’re warding ourselves against fire, just in case it’s not.

Akrivel, Mwangi

Night

We dissipated the Dahak manifestation and stepped through the portal on the far end of the tunnel.

Before we tried activating Huntergate, Renali told us what we should expect on the other side. She described a beautiful, open-air temple to the elven god Ketephys that now lay in ruins. “I watched in horror as the Cinderclaws smashed the temple and burned its gardens.”

And the weather?

“Hot. And humid.”

We exited the portal into the burned-out remains of a temple to Ketephys, dense jungle all around us. It was very hot. And very humid.

And we were surrounded by about two dozen dark-skinned elves, looking right at us with arrows drawn. They did not look pleased.

Before anyone could shoot us, I called out in Elvish, “We mean you no harm! We’re here in pursuit of the Cinderclaw cult!”

One of the elves stepped forward and asked, “You seek the Cinderclaws?”

“Yes,” I said. “They attacked us.”

“I see,” he said, looking at each of us with an appraising eye. “And you are…?”

“Here to kill Cinderclaws.”

His name was Jahsi, and he was a leadership figure of some sort—he used the word “keledi”, which is not one I recognized—in the Leopard Clan. After introductions, we had what I would call a tense conversation. Tense for us, because they still had bows and, except for Jahsi, seemed ready to use them. Jahsi was more relaxed.

He also spoke Taldane, which was a bit of a surprise. None of us knew precisely where in the Mwangi jungle we were, but I know generally where it is on a map, and it’s not a part of the world where Taldane is widely spoken. Jahsi was also the only one of them wearing any gold jewelry (none of us were wearing any gold either). I suppose I noticed it because my family once had plenty of it.

Our anti-Cinderclaw position, combined with the story of what happened on our side of Huntergate, earned us an invitation to their village for a feast. He explained that their clan is tasked with guarding this portal.

Alseta’s Ring dates back to before Earthfall. They’ve been doing this for thousands of years. That is a remarkably long time, even by elven standards. And I doubt that they normally do it with two dozen archers. My guess is the Cinderclaws changed that when they tore through here.

The Leopard Clan’s village was built just under the tree canopy, with branches intertwined to support the weight of buildings and platforms. Bridges made from vines spread out from it in all directions, providing a walkway through the jungle stretching as far as I could see. Some of the trees were massive, with trunks easily ten feet in diameter. The Ekujae grafted fruit trees onto the trunks, and occasionally meshed branches together and filled them with soil to create floating gardens.

The scale of it is spectacular.

It’s also the anti-Druma. It is the opposite of all I’ve learned about how communities function. There are no shops or markets. From what I can see, everyone contributes to the tribe in their way, making what’s needed, when it’s needed. No currency, no buying or selling, no profit or loss, and none of the social trappings that come with these things. It also means no poverty and no one left impoverished. It certainly appears that everyone is cared for by, well, everyone.

As long as you feel like you are part of your community, of course. I wonder if this is where the Renalis of the world come from: people who feel trapped by obligation. But I suppose we have those problems, too.

We were allowed to wander the village ahead of the feast, so I set down my weapons, removed my armor, pulled out my new cittern, and went in search of the tribe’s artisans and musicians. 

Over the last few weeks, I’d been making good on my promise to Nish—or perhaps that promise was to myself—to become comfortable with string instruments. I chose the cittern to honor her. As it turns out, while the lute may have a warmer, more mellow sound, the cittern is simply more fun to play.

Carrying that with me here, surrounded by elves, reminded me of her. I could almost feel her walking beside me.

The instruments here are very different, which means the music is as well. But it’s more than just the sound they produce: it’s also the way they put rhythms together, weaving several independent patterns into something that somehow feels simpler than any one of them alone.

I, uh, spent hours with the tribe’s musicians, trading styles, even instruments (I learned to play a kora, which I’d heard of but never seen!). I was so caught up in it that I didn’t even notice when it started getting dark.

I am not sure what the others did with their time. A few joined the hunting party for the feast (I am still wrapping my head around the notion of declaring a feast before you have food to serve). I think Tarsius spent time talking with the guards. And Gath, true to form, just seemed to pick a direction and walk.

Just ahead of the feast, we were summoned to meet with the Twin Leopards, the twin sisters Ose Panin and Ose Atsu, who lead the clan. They wanted to learn a little about us before the festivities began. And that’s where things took a turn.

“Please tell us about your friends and families, your occupations, what you consider important, and what you are most proud of about yourselves.”

And just like that, I wanted to be anywhere else. I could feel Iskaryn shift uncomfortably. I mean, I would be more than happy to talk about myself, but…tell them about my family? I did not want to do that at all. And I didn’t feel I could avoid it.

When my turn came, I took a deep breath and said, “My father hung himself. My mother is probably alive somewhere. If I’m lucky, I’ll never find her.

“Family is…complicated.

“My friends are the people I travel with. They’re probably the first people I’ve known who’ve learned truths about me and stayed. What’s most important to me is keeping your word so people will trust you. And what I’m proud of,” I said, pointing to Iskaryn, perched on a branch above us, “is her.”

True to form, she fluttered down, landed on top of my head, and gave a very human bow.

The biggest shock of this exchange came from Qantrip. It didn’t occur to me until she stood up that none of us knew anything about her. She has never said anything about where she was from.

Then she spoke. “A witch is called Qantrip,” she said. “This was the name given to her by her slave master. She has not found another yet. She has no family. The same master slaughtered them all. A witch’s entire tribe. A witch was in his service.

“Look around. These are the things a witch considers friends. Bound by a Harrow we still don’t talk about.

“What is most important? A witch is in service to the sovereign hourglass. That, above all, is where a witch leads. What a witch is most proud of?” 

She pulled out an elven skull and said, “A witch outlived him.”

Nine Hells.

Late night

Before the feast, Osa Panin challenged me to a little music competition. Because of course she plays the flute.

We just sort of agreed on a duel. I don’t generally like competitions, but duels are another matter. Done right, they are really a conversation in music. We started cautiously, probing each other’s skills, then started adding variations, passing them back and forth. Then came a little modulation, some unusual rhythms, and then suddenly we were playing with each other rather than against. Which is exactly how it was supposed to go.

We both looked ridiculously pleased with ourselves after it was done.

“Thank you,” she said, grinning. “I needed that.”

I needed it, too.

Then she offered us a gift. And things went a little sideways.

“As token of the skill and character you displayed here, you are the friends of the Leopard Clan. I understand it is the way of your people to give gifts at such occasions, so please allow us to offer you this.”

It wasn’t intended to be for me, specifically; I just happened to be there. She picked up a dagger and presented it to me to take. I reached for it, and then suddenly realized that I could feel it. It was made of cold iron.

Cold iron doesn’t harm me, but ever since the Forest, it makes me uneasy. There’s just a wrongness to it.

I hesitated.

And pulled my hand back.

And then every pair of eyes was suddenly on me.

Liberte stepped up to accept instead.

I tried to explain. I don’t know how coherent it was. But everyone stopped staring at me and the night went on.

The feast itself was wonderful. Music, dancing, food I’d never tasted before, and a series of friendly competitions that seemed to spring up whenever someone got brave enough to challenge one of us to something.

Nketiah, Jahsi’s half-human, half-elven daughter, recruited us into a conspiracy of sorts. According to her, her father and his oldest friend Akosa had spent the better part of a decade in love with one another, but couldn’t bring themselves to act on their feelings. She asked us to help nudge the evening in the right direction. Music seemed as good a way as any. While I played, my friends subtly manipulated the dance pairings, and the two finally found themselves partnered together. Judging by Nketiah’s grin afterward, we’d managed to help.

The evening concluded with stories. Nketiah is the clan’s linguist, and called us all into a circle. She went first.

And we learned the story of why they’ve guarded Huntergate for thousands of years. 

She spoke of a Great Darkness that emerged into a world already suffering and sought to reduce everything to ash. The Ekujae stood against it, sacrificing their greatest heroes to wound it before finally imprisoning it somewhere between worlds, where they swore to stand watch so that it could never escape.

What stuck with me, though, was the ending. She asked, “Could the people imprison the Darkness forever, when even the best among them could not defeat it? Was it foolish to expect them to try?”

 

Her story over, Nketiah invited us to answer with stories of our own. It struck me that the point wasn’t entertainment. This was simply what came next. They had shared the story they had been given. Now they wanted to know the stories that shaped us.

Gath told of leading goblin hunters against marauding boars. Liberte transformed a tale of reclaiming Citadel Altaerein into an academic lecture. Marcus spoke of ancient dragons and the visions that brought him to Breachill. Tarsius spoke of defending a caravan and realizing Nethys had placed him exactly where he was needed.

And I told the story of the Five Kings Minstrels.

I didn’t think about it until much later.

I’d never actually told anyone that story before.

Not even Iskaryn.

 

When the feast had wound down, Nketiah asked to speak with us privately.

We learned the Cinderclaws fled east after their attack on Huntergate. The Ekujae tracked them, but reached a point in the jungle where they could go no further. Whenever they tried to enter, they were struck blind.

“The Darkness has a grudge against us,” she said. “The Cinderclaws are using the power of that grudge to keep the Ekujae from striking them at the seat of their power.”

The Cinderclaws had tried to raise a pillar outside Huntergate before going through, but the Ekujae destroyed it before they could finish. We examined the remains before leaving for the village. It had been a wooden pillar topped with a carved dragon’s head. On the ground next to it was a leather bag that held a single gold bar.

Qantrip took the time to study it and concluded it was one of many such devices. They were designed to harm the Ekujae. And defend themselves.

“So what would you say if I asked you to investigate the jungle to the east?” Nketiah asked.

We said we’d start in the morning.

Arodus 24, 4719

Citadel Altaerein

Night

I went back to the Pickled Ear yesterday to see Roxie. Not because I expected us to become friends overnight, but because I wanted to repair some of the damage we’d done.

Looking back, I think we put her in an impossible position. All she really did was mind her own business. And, at the time, there was nothing to find. The worst Voz was doing at that time was entering the ossuary of an abandoned citadel and speaking with the dead. Suspicious? Yes. Criminal? Not as far as I know.

While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that we scared Roxie when we confronted her, we certainly put her on edge. Tossing around the involvement of the Town Council didn’t help, and it surely didn’t do us any favors. As I said, we met with her afterwards and made sure she knew we weren’t throwing her to the wolves, but I didn’t feel like it was enough.

I wanted to reset our relationship with her and hopefully earn her trust.

Once we got the awkwardness out of the way, she and I started talking shop. The Pickled Ear is, as I’ve said before, the kind of tavern I try to avoid because it’s a little seedy and a lot rough. But Roxie doesn’t just like that reputation; she cultivates it. It’s a place for “regular folk,” as she puts it. The problem is, “rough” can get out of hand, and lately it’s been getting worse. People need to be able to go in with the reasonable expectation of not being stabbed.

Roxie sees this as a clientele problem. And, yeah, it’s a self-feeding cycle. The people who aren’t bothered by the atmosphere are the ones who make the atmosphere worse. She knows she needs to attract new clients, or at least bring back the ones who stopped coming. What she needed help with was getting her ideas past the idea stage.

“If people only come to fight, then we need to give them another reason to come,” I said.

“I was thinkin’ about a contest of some sort. Just don’t know how to make it happen.”

It was a brilliant idea, actually, and I latched on to it. 

“Why not host a darts tournament?” I said. I have yet to see a tavern that didn’t have dart boards. “Even people who’d never thrown one might be willing to try.”

From there, I got a little carried away. Qualifying rounds. Multiple divisions. Sponsorship for a prize worth competing for—not just prize money. Food specials. Music between rounds to keep spectators from wandering off. The Drake used to do this sort of thing.

Somewhere around my description of non-elimination tournament formats, I realized Roxie had stopped asking for advice and started assigning me responsibilities. I walked in expecting to repair a friendship, and walked out with a gig.

 

Offering music between rounds suddenly meant I needed musicians. Fortunately, I knew exactly where to start.

I’d been meaning to visit Shelyn’s Smile, the local artisan guild and temple to Shelyn, since I first arrived in Breachill, but too many things kept getting in the way. Being burned alive in the town hall. Getting nearly eaten by grauladons. Unlocking the secrets of ancient elf gates. You know, stuff like that.

I brought Iskaryn along. While Shelynites aren’t generally preoccupied with appearances, there are times when you need to make a good first impression. Iskaryn excels at first impressions. Aside from her striking coloration, we’ve been practicing our duets. She enjoys performing every bit as much as I do. 

And while Shelynites aren’t generally vain, they do appreciate beauty. Bringing Iskaryn into their temple almost felt like cheating.

It worked.

Tarindlara greeted us with all the poise I would expect from the head of an artisan guild and a prominent Shelynite. She was so immaculate that she made standing still look graceful. In Druma, I saw no shortage of people who mistook ostentation for class. Tarindlara wasn’t one of them.

She asked if Iskaryn and I would play something. We obliged. Then one piece became two, and by the end, people had stopped what they were doing to listen.

She invited us into the music hall, and the afternoon quickly turned into an exchange of songs. They wanted to hear the music I’d collected during my travels. In return, they taught me some of their own.

I also found the musicians I was looking for.

Arodus 31, 4719

Breachill

Afternoon

This tournament will be the end of me.

It starts in three days, and I still don’t have the first prize dart sets. They are beautiful, or would be if they existed, and wonderfully balanced according to people who know more about this than I do. Great. Crink swears to me that they will be ready tomorrow. Which sounds fantastic, except that’s what he said yesterday. And the day before. But don’t worry: they’ll really be done tomorrow. Apparently, when we set this up, I forgot to ask for the adverb service.

On top of that, I’m supposed to have a basket of preserves and smoked meats. But someone messed up the order, and two days ago, I got nothing but preserves. I pointed out the mistake. The next day? A basket of cured meats.

Fuck it. I combined them, and we now have two prize baskets with both. I somehow forgot to tell them they accidentally doubled the order.

We’re also short two dart boards, which is kind of important since it will take twice as long for this thing to run with only half the boards. They are supposed to arrive from Elidir…lessee…yesterday. So, sure, we’ll add that to the list.

On the upside, the notices have been posted. I’m fortunate to live in a town where most people are literate, so I didn’t have to hire someone from Shelyn’s Smile to decorate them with little pictures.

As for the—

 

I just realized I wrote that I live here.

Rova 3, 4719

Castle Altaerein

Night

All in all, the tournament went pretty well.

The start was admittedly rough. I announce I’ll be tallying scores and posting the pairings after each round, and there’s two guys just staring at me. So I ask, “What?” And I’m trying to keep my voice cool and level because I’ve been getting questions and weird looks all morning, as it seems like nobody is reading anything.

The first guy says, “Why not just rotate boards? Go counter-clockwise.” 

And I just stare at him because, um, yeah. Why not just go counter-clockwise?

Then the other guy interjects and says, “No! Use the Old Brewery format.” And I’m thinking, What in the Nine Hells is the ‘Old Brewery’ format?

But it’s obvious I am missing something here, because a bunch of people are nodding their heads enthusiastically, so I just say, “Explain it.”

“Four to a board. Everyone throws everyone. Board winners advance.”

The name apparently comes from this tavern a couple of miles west of town that does regular dart tournaments. And I look down at my sheets and realize, yeah, that is way better than what I was doing. And it occurs to me that these people have actually been in dart tournaments before and I haven’t, so of course they know this stuff.

“OK!” I say. “We’ll do the ‘Old Brewery’ format!” and a couple of people cheer and lots more look relieved, and I am just grateful no one is looking at me like I’m an idiot anymore.

And the format is pretty efficient, which is probably why that other tavern uses it. On top of that, it exposes a pair of sandbaggers right away. One woman in the “Apprentice” division and one man in “Journeyman” just dominate their matches, and lots of people notice they have suspiciously good form. And it’s really easy to spot with the matches arranged like they are. 

I hear, “Oh, they are one of those assholes” when the woman is in her third match. She’s just claiming she hasn’t played in years, but no one buys it. Someone commented that she’s trying to hide it but occasionally slipping up, throwing darts without really studying the board. Another sees her keeping score on her fingers while waiting. That settles it for the regulars, so she’s disqualified, and we go to the standby list.

The other guy is worse. He is recognized. Someone says, “Didn’t you win the Iswell last summer?” And, again, I’m thinking to myself, What in Magdh’s name is the ‘Iswell’? But I don’t need to know that, because four other people do, and Roxie’s bouncer has to get involved before a fight breaks out. He’s tossed, and again, we go to the standby list.

There are other bumps. People ask me the same five questions dozens of times. And the Masters division gets way more spectators than I’d planned on, and Roxie actually has to rearrange tables to fit everyone inside. In fact, everyone doesn’t fit inside. But that’s fine, because at least no one is punching anyone, which is kind of a first for the Pickled Ear when it’s even half this crowded. She shoves a table aside, and she and her bouncer overturn another to stack them on top of one another. I catch her eye, and she winks at me, showing a big grin as more people flood in to fill the space.

When it was all over, Roxie said she grossed about 50gp, though net was just shy of 15 after expenses. Many of those were one-time, though, and she figured she could get another 10, maybe more, next time. The real win was having a packed house with no fights, a few more people coming back, and maybe some opportunities for some live music.

Sitting in her office, she said, “Fair is fair,” and passed 3gp over to me. A pretty good sum for a few days’ work that was mostly organizing. “You seem to have a bigger dose of ‘street smarts’ than you look like you ought to”, she added with a bit of a lingering look.

I shrugged. “I spent plenty of time on them.”

“You sure don’t look it, but ain’t my business, I guess.”

I don’t know what to make of that. By the time I got back to the citadel, I’d mostly stopped trying.

The place is clean, and the outer walls are patched. Work has shifted to rebuilding the stairs down to the basement, and digging out the rubble. It’s starting to feel like a home. A big, spacious, drafty home with some complicated history, but home.

And I’m tired.

On the way back, I commented to Iskaryn, “We haven’t been arguing much lately.”

She flitted to a branch, looked at me, and said, “You haven’t asked me to.” Then she took off and disappeared into the woods.

I am too tired to figure out what that’s supposed to mean.

Arodus 22, 4719

Breachill

Afternoon

I’ve spent a lot of time with Renali off and on over the past couple of weeks. She’s been helping me learn some Mwangi, which has been a good excuse for us to talk at length.

I’ve always had an ear for languages. I know the best time to learn is supposed to be when you’re young, but it’s never been difficult for me. Back in Macridi, I picked up Sylvan nearly just from exposure to it. In school, I learned Dwarven because The Five Kings the dwarven city-states were next door, and dwarves were everywhere. I learned Aklo so I could speak with Marcus when he has his episodes. Elven has been a project for a while, but given where we’re probably headed, I’ve been pushing on that too.

Anyway, she and I were having lunch in the Wizard’s Grace, just chatting about nothing, really, when she abruptly said, “You never talk about your family.”

I don’t have a lot of tells. Two years of a carefully constructed identity bludgeoned most of those out of me. But now that I’ve…started living as myself, direct questions like this have a way of throwing me off. I know she saw it.

“My family…wasn’t very good at being a family,” I said, not really sure where to go with this. I was not exactly comfortable telling the others about it, and Renali wasn’t even part of that circle. But…she deserved some truth. “That includes me, too. My father was not a responsible man. My mother was not particularly nurturing. And I was distant from both of them. None of us treated each other the way we deserved.

“Um. Mom makes that harder to say.”

I honestly don’t know if she loved me, or just loved having a daughter. I thought she loved me when I was young, but as I listened to people like Kyira and Tarsius talk about their families, I realized I just didn’t have a good frame of reference for what that meant. I was too young to understand what I was seeing in those days, but looking back, healthier examples were all around me. I think she had a plan for the life she wanted, and having a daughter was part of it. The trouble was, I turned out to have plans of my own.

“I think I understand what you mean,” Renali said. “Some parents have a hard time realizing we aren’t supposed to become smaller versions of themselves.” She was quiet for a moment before adding, “And some just shouldn’t have been parents.”

I won’t deny it. That second one hit hard. I could feel Iskaryn flinch through the bond, even as far away as she was.

I knew a little bit about Renali. She was born into an insular clan—those are her words, not mine—and as she grew up, this wanderlust took hold, and she started feeling less at home when she was at home. Her parents recognized her potential, but saw where she was headed and kept trying to nudge her back down the path they had planned for her.

It didn’t work.

She tried to play the part of the herbalist—really tried—but it only left her feeling empty inside. So very empty.

“I don’t know if it would help to share this, but…” She paused, thinking for a moment, then said, “One day, our village herbalist, Yoneria, the one whose role I was being trained to assume, saw my ennui. She sat me down to talk, and the truth just…poured out. I told her I didn’t want the training. I didn’t want the life of the village herbalist, no matter how important that role was.”

“How did she take it?” I asked.

“She was saddened. Disheartened. But not for the reasons I expected. She told me that I valued myself so little that I was willing to languish in unhappiness, just to avoid disappointing my family.”

“Nine Hells,” I said. “That…that had to hurt.”

“It did. But I knew it was true once she said it. And she knew I wouldn’t take the initiative, so she acted for me. She devised a plan for me that was truly for me. I would go into the wild, and after two years, I was to return and make my decision: the village, or the life of an explorer.

“I was terrified,” she laughed. “Both of how my parents would react to such a brazen plan, and of being alone in the wider world. But they agreed, to my surprise. They were willing to let me go. I just hadn’t stood up for myself enough for them to understand. I think they wanted me to be happy more than they wanted me to become the village herbalist. I just never gave them the chance to show it.

“As for the latter, it seems to be working out,” she said, gesturing around the room.

“You handled it with more grace than I did. When I pushed back…” I said, the sentence dying in the air between us.

For a long moment, neither of us spoke. Then Renali smiled faintly.

“At least you pushed back.”

Arodus 19, 4719

Citadel Altaerein

Evening

I needed a break from organizing the repair work for the outer walls, so this afternoon, I stopped in at Cayden’s Keg. It had been a few days since I was last there, and I was missing the atmosphere.

When I first arrived in Breachill, it was where I spent most of my evenings because it’s the most comfortable for me and also fairly lively—almost bordering on bustling—which makes it a great place for music. It also didn’t hurt that it’s less expensive than the Wizard’s Grace, and less violent than the Pickled Ear.

At the slowest part of the day, the place is a mix of busy and subdued, and that’s what I was in the mood for. I just wanted to sit quietly at a two-top, have a drink or two, and watch and listen to people.

What I was not expecting was for Brynne to come out and sit down with me.

Cayden’s Keg doubles as a temple of Cayden Cailean, and Brynne is, for lack of a better term, the head priestess. It’s kind of a loose religion, mostly involving ale, and lots of it. I have visited several of his temples in the past couple of months, and they all look pretty much like this. Though Brynne’s is in better shape than most. Breachill even manages to make drinking earnest.

“I missed seeing you in here,” she said. Which was surprising, since I’d only been in town a few days before all this happened. I said as much.

“I could tell when I first saw you that you had some stories in you,” she said. “And I recognize a traveler when I see them.”

“I did walk here from Druma,” I said. “The long way.”

“Path of Commencement, along the rivers, then a right at Elidir. Am I close?”

I laughed and said, “Spot on. Though I stopped in Dustspawn and Saringallow.”

“Saringallow. That must have been an experience.”

“Almost as much fun as a bout of cholera.”

We traded stories for a while. Word had already spread about everything we’d been doing over the past couple of weeks. Without mentioning Alseta’s Ring, I told her about the Bloody Blades and chasing Voz. The latter’s arrest came as something of a relief to quite a lot of people, it seems. I guess Voz did not go out of her way to be liked. If anything, she did the opposite.

“You know, you should tell that here. Maybe tomorrow night. Only embellish it a little,” she suggested. “People are curious about the new stewards of the Citadel. Showing them you’re more fun than the last ones would go a long way.”

I smiled and said, “I would love to do that! Thank you. Though, hopefully, we don’t have to work to convince people we’re better neighbors than the Order. I am pretty sure they slot in somewhere along the cholera-Saringallow scale.”

“Not much convincing, no,” she said with a grin. “But as the Placard of Wisdom says: Good folk don’t need convincing. They just need meeting.”

Arodus 20, 4719

Breachill

Afternoon

My first, and second, impressions of the Wizard’s Grace were that it was too expensive, and too full of itself.

I was wrong about the latter, and I’ve made peace with the former. I don’t know why I had the reaction I did.

Or maybe I do. I think it reminded me too much of the Drake. Obviously, the town is different, and the people are different, but it feels the same. The food, the music, the atmosphere, the way it respects its patrons, and, crucially, the people those things tend to attract. I know now that the Wizard’s Grace, like the Forest’s Drake in Macridi, is Breachill’s common room.

I spent so long trying not to think about what I had lost that when I found something like it again, my first instinct was to push it away.

I was there late morning, before it started getting busy, and was able to catch the owner, Trinil, alone.

“I owe you an apology,” I said.

She gave me a perplexed look. We’d probably not spoken more than a few words to one another.

“For what?” she asked.

“I judged your establishment before I understood it.”

This took her aback, but then she half-smiled and said. “That’s a rather formal apology.”

“I practiced.”

Her grandfather was an adventurer, and apparently a well-known one. This whole tradition the town has of people eating that famous boar stew before the Call for Heroes? It was her way of honoring his memory. “Before setting out on whatever road called to him, that’s what he would eat. He loved it.”

I’d unknowingly been mocking sentiment. It’s the sort of thing that makes me feel like a heel.

We got to talking. Like Brynne, she enjoys hearing adventuring stories, but for a very different reason. Brynne wants the excitement they bring to a room, stories that will enrapt a crowd of patrons, or create a sense of camaraderie. Trinil listens because every one of them reminds her of her grandfather, just a little bit.

Most of the town knows something about us. Trinil had heard I came from Druma, and had traveled here on foot. She asked what started me down this path.

Of course, that is an uncomfortable story, but I could give her a kernel of it.

During that time in the Palakar Forest, I was so busy grieving that I never stopped to wonder how I was still alive. Not because of the attack, but because I was alone, in a fey forest, with no food or water, just a few arrows, and a dagger. By all rights, I should have died there. The fey are not known for their restraint—or their sympathy—and many are openly hostile to intruders. Yet somehow I stumbled into that place, desperate, alone, and grieving, and walked out again three weeks later.

It changed me. Not just in the metaphorical sense. When I left, I could see in twilight as though it were the middle of the day. The Forest had marked me.

That was the story I told. Something terrible happened, and I was forced to enter the Palakar Forest alone, with nothing to my name, and it accepted me. Adopted me. Treated me like one of its own.

She didn’t say anything for a while. Somehow, that felt like the right response.

Arodus 21, 4719

Breachill

Night

The first time I entered Lamond’s Lament, it was because I had no choice.

When I left Kerse, I believed I could plan my way through starting over. I budgeted every coin, calculated what I could afford, and convinced myself that enough discipline would keep me afloat.

In Macridi, I thought it worked.

Once I reached Breachill, I was forced to confront the reality that my plan hadn’t carried me far at all. Over and over, I misread good fortune as accomplishment. Then, in a matter of hours, I was back where I’d started, only this time with even less.

The norns gave me a destination and enough money to start the journey. They did not spare me from arriving broke and hungry. And that’s how I found myself standing outside Lamond’s Lament, trying to convince myself to walk through the door.

I honestly didn’t think I belonged there. I didn’t feel like I deserved to be there, because I believed I was simply living with the consequences of my actions. But Iskaryn was insistent, and I was too exhausted to argue with her, so I went inside.

Renatta didn’t ask me why I was there. She didn’t ask me what happened. She asked me my name.

Today, I walked into Lamond’s Lament because I needed to understand why.

Renatta saw me come in, and she knew. She smiled at me, handed me an apron, and suggested that I start by shadowing the other volunteers. I watched as someone new came in, looking every bit as uncomfortable and embarrassed as I’d been only a few weeks before.  Renatta did for them exactly what she did for me. She asked them their name. She served them personally. She sat down with them, and she listened.

I went in expecting to stay for only a couple of hours. Instead, I stayed all day.

As we closed down in the evening, she said to me, “Some people come through those doors because life knocked them down. A poor harvest. An illness. A lost job. They just need a little help getting back on their feet. Others have been down so long they don’t remember what it feels like to stand.

“The important thing to understand is that it doesn’t matter why they come in. What matters is that they come in.”

I’ve been so cynical about this town, but I think I finally understand why Breachill is the way it is.

Arodus 8, 4719

Breachill

Night

We offered Warbal the role of the citadel’s seneschal today, and it makes a great deal of sense.

We are already granting the Bumblebrashers the right to live in the part of the citadel they occupied before (my memory is hazy here, as I didn’t see these sorts of documents often, but I believe the legal term is a “perpetual servitude of occupation”…which sounds far less welcoming than “you can have your home back”). This means Warbal would not only run the day-to-day affairs of the fortress—once we have any, though “cleaning” will do for now—but also serve as the point of contact between the Bumblebrashers and the rest of us. She already fills that role as the tribe’s ambassador to Breachill, so making her our seneschal felt like a natural fit.

She enthusiastically accepted, and even refused the stipend for the first month as a gesture of gratitude for securing the tribe’s future. She also wasted no time in getting started, preparing a comprehensive cleaning schedule, with a level of organization that bordered on frightening.

More power to her. I am all too happy to have someone just tell me what needs to be done, and when.

The city also requested our help with inventorying Voz’s shop, which, in retrospect, was probably inevitable. We’re the ones who uncovered her schemes, and then unraveled them (at least in part). They wanted to know who she had been corresponding with, and how deeply those people were involved. Honestly, so did we. There was no way we were turning down the opportunity.

I had my own reason for wanting to help. Voz had a book on Breachill’s history, and she had written notes in the margins—most of them pejorative if not outright vitriolic—that contradicted the generally accepted narrative. She even went as far as calling its founder “that lying wizard”. Where had these suspicions come from? Someone had convinced her the official history was a lie. I wanted to know who.

On the city’s investigation, we didn’t come away empty-handed. Voz’s business records looked ordinary at first glance, but after spending years copying ledgers and official documents, you develop a feel for when something is off. Ordinary-looking ledger entries concealed instructions relating to certain shipments, all handled through a courier service called Tabir’s Exotic Wares. Each one lined up almost perfectly with the letters she had been exchanging with her contact in the Scarlet Triad.

On paper, the shipments were completely unremarkable, but the hidden notes told a different story. They instructed couriers to bypass the tax master. They referenced payments from a Scarlet Triad account. Most alarming of all? One decoded to the words: “client requests update on ring’s condition”.

She wasn’t merely corresponding with the Scarlet Triad. She was reporting to them.

The history book, on the other hand, was a complete disappointment. I looked through every note, hoping she’d cite a source, even scribble the name of someone she’d spoken to. Nothing. Just insults, accusations, and certainty. Not a single book or document in her shop supported her allegations. It was as though she’d arrived at all of these conclusions by divine revelation.

Why does this bother me so much? Because I have found myself asking the same questions. Ever since I heard the story of the magnanimous wizard in Isger, I had my doubts about it. And Voz’s questions echo my own: Why did he help them? And where did he go? Lamond Breachton seems to exist only in this one slice of history.

Questions are easy. Answers require evidence.

And right now, all I have are the former.

Arodus 13, 4719

Breachill

Night

We’ve spent the last several days cleaning. It is soul-crushing work.

It isn’t the work that’s getting to me, but the memories of home that it’s dredging up. I know that what we’re doing here is moving in the opposite direction, but I can’t help but draw parallels between the two. With every hour spent scrubbing, sweeping, and mopping, removing grime and stains with soap, sweat, and magic, it gets a little bit cleaner and a little bit nicer. Slowly, the citadel is shifting from despair toward promise. It’s like watching my childhood in reverse.

I’m tired, and everything hurts.

It’s not as though the work is unfamiliar to me. In Macridi, I was a server in The Forest’s Drake, and cleaning at the end of the night was part of the job. Pretty much every surface would end up soiled in some fashion, including the ceilings (don’t ask). In the months before that, I occasionally found work cleaning homes, flats, and businesses, all in various states of repair. But I have never done so much of it, so intensely, for so long.

I think this is what people mean when they say “reality has settled in”. A few days ago, I was hopeful, even excited, about the prospect of owning something. Some place. But that glamour has faded. This place is work piled on top of work, and while it will get better, it will never stop.

We can’t do all of it ourselves. None of us has the experience, materials, or magic for stonework, so we are contracting it out. There are two stonemasons in Breachill, and we have one of them rebuilding the exterior wall of the training room this week. With more holes to patch and stairs to rebuild, I suspect we’ll be keeping both of them busy for the foreseeable future.

And then there is the deed. Every morning, before heading to the citadel for my cleaning duties, I spend time trying to understand our options. I’ve reviewed a fair number of deeds that are registered with the city—accessing these records just takes time and patience—and met with an advocate. I laid out what I think are our options.

“Right now, we, as individuals, own this property,” I explained. “This opens up the possibility that, should something happen to one of us, family could make legal claims on the estate. I don’t know where my mother is, if she is looking for me, or even if she’s still alive, but I prefer to assume the worst. I don’t want her showing up and taking anything more from me. Even if I’m gone.”

I proposed we form a charter company. We’d determine our purpose, create a charter, and establish voting procedures for everything from membership to property sale, including the sale or transfer of our individual seats in the company itself.

“The citadel would then be owned by the institution rather than us as individuals, stopping any claims of inheritance or kinship. It would also prevent theft and illegal transfer of the deed, since a vote of existing members would be required to do so.” We could even establish procedures for vacant seats in the event of incapacitation or death of a member. That might be wise if we continue on our present course. “And, we’d need to give ourselves a name.”

Failing that, we could establish a Trust. Given how my life was shaped by one, I don’t particularly like the idea. But worded properly, it would provide similar protection.

No one objected. Everyone seemed to settle into the idea that this wasn’t just a temporary arrangement anymore. We weren’t merely sharing ownership of a building. We were building an institution.

After a long silence, Trip said, “It was Fate that used the Harrow to bring us together. Such a name can be crafted from this common thing.”

And so the Seven Card Consortium was born.

Arodus 6, 4719

Breachill

Night

Alseta’s Ring is real. I have seen it, touched it, and felt the magic that courses through it. I saw the door guardian come to life and challenge us. I walked through the burned-out ruins of one of its way stations, which had materialized on this plane and was responsible for the breach in the caves that made it possible for us to even reach it.

It is one thing to know that something this ancient exists. It’s another thing to touch stones that were laid thousands of years ago, before even Earthfall.

There were six archways around the perimeter, each leading nowhere save for the damaged one we had come through. Each was decorated in a different style, faced a statue at the center of the ring, and bore a name: Jewelgate faced a statue of Alseta, Vengegate faced Callistra, and so on.

The deed to the citadel is real, too. The guardian wasn’t protecting Alseta’s Ring itself, but a small chamber attached to it. For all the legends around elf gates, it was this unremarkable room that seemed to warrant a keeper. The Order of the Nail put it to practical use, and turned it into their records room. Tables and shelves were empty save for the deed itself, left behind for the bearer to claim.

Liberte studied it carefully, and said it appeared to be legitimate. It fit the tone and tenor of documents created by the Hellknights, and the Order of the Nail specifically. I asked to see it, too, as I had experience working with official documents in Macridi. I felt like my arms were shaking when I reviewed it, afraid of…I don’t know. That it wouldn’t be real. Or perhaps that it would be. And it looked right. The official language. The way the document was structured. It looked like nearly every deed I’d seen in my old life.

We had a home.

Late Night

Getting to the Ring was not easy. While Voz had helpfully blazed a trail for us, we still had to make it the rest of the way there.

Not everything was hostile. We encountered a strange woman that appeared to be human, but from talking to her it was clear that she was something else, and only taking a human form. Voz had run into her, too, and in her journal she said the woman had a strange affinity with spiders. That proved to be true.

The journal also said that the woman ran from Voz when she saw her. Considering that Voz had a bunch of animated skeletons for companions, I can’t say that this response was unreasonable. In her position, I probably would have run from Voz, too.

Once we got her talking, we learned her name was Renali, and that she had come through the same gate as the Cinderclaws.

“I was watching them as they clumsily made their attempts to activate Huntergate in the jungle back home,” she explained, “and when they somehow managed it, I was curious, and followed them through.”

“Do you know where the portal is?” I asked.

“I know exactly, yes, it’s not far from here,” she said. “I just can’t do anything about it.”

“Maybe we can. We have people who know magic.”

“I ‘know magic’ too,” she snapped. “That’s not quite enough. This is old elven artifact stuff.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. We also have access to libraries and experts, and the time to invest in research without starving to death first. That felt like a better starting point than sitting in a cave in an unfamiliar part of the world. But, sure, give us attitude.

Still, she was nice enough, obviously not a fan of the Cinerclaws, and something of an explorer herself. We agreed to help her get home if we could.

Less pleasant was Ralldar, a somewhat unhinged creature that Liberte and Qantrip said was a barghest. What’s a barghest? I still don’t know, but Qantrip and Liberte seemed to, and Qantrip said they were often revered by goblinkind. She thought she could bargain with it, so we followed her lead, pretending to be her retinue. After an opening exchange, it demanded that we pay tribute. What kind of tribute? Well…

“I have decided you all, all of you little servants of the goblin, must fetch me the skull of a spider mounted on the skeleton of a human!”

I did say it was unhinged, right? But, we had just killed a few giant spiders, and there were some skeletal remains a couple of caves back, so we all kind of looked at each other and said, “We can do that!”

After that was the Cinderclaws themselves. Access to the Ring was through a breach in the cave floor, and the plan was to jump down, using magic to slow our falls, then overwhelm them before they could organize a defense. As usual, that is not how things went. Space was tight, resistance was immediate and fierce, and we got all bunched up. With nowhere for us to land, Renali and I were stuck up above while the fighting raged below.

“So,” I said after a long, awkward pause. “Is there a Mr. Renali back home?”

There are only so many times you can peer down a hole and ask, “Are we good to jump yet?” before the conversation starts to drift.

There isn’t, by the way.

As for the remaining Cinderclaws? Even before our assault their situation seemed pretty desperate: they were confined to this small space, and had run out of supplies. Imagine living several days like that, trapped underground, no food, no water, and sleeping next to your midden pile. After everything was over, you could almost say we solved their starvation problem, but, sadly, our altruism went unappreciated.

Getting back out of the caves proved more difficult than getting in because we had to deal with Ralldar again. His suggestion for a tribute on our return trip through was to sacrifice someone. None of us were willing to volunteer, so we chose him. He objected. Strenuously. It was not an easy fight, but there was only one of him and several of us. Together, we proved more than a match. Which is good, because I was not in the mood to follow in the footsteps of the Cinderclaws by slowly starving to death in Alseta’s Ring.

Renali accepted the offer to join us in town. I figured it beat living in a cave. I promised to show her around, too, though that was maybe a little presumptuous of me since I’ve only been here a week, myself. But, what the hell. It’s not exactly a big town, and for the first time in recent memory I was feeling optimistic. I even chose to leave The Dreamhouse and stay somewhere nice.

It’s been a while since I’d last splurged.

Arodus 7, 4719

Breachill

Noon

We are officially the owners of a former Hellknight citadel. It is, of course, in various states of disrepair, and it has a rather complicated reputation in Breachill thanks to the hospitality of its former owners, but it is ours. We presented the deed to the registrar, and they verified its authenticity and officially recorded the transfer of the title.

But because nothing is ever easy, there are Issues.

The first, and most significant, is that the deed itself grants ownership to the bearer. That, of course, is what allowed us to take ownership of the property and structure, but it also means that anyone who possesses the deed can make a competing claim. Actually having registered the transfer helps protect us against that, but it is not foolproof, and we need to take steps to protect our ownership in the future. Unless we want to spend the rest of our lives guarding a few sheets of paper to prevent being dragged into a legal battle over who is the rightful owner, we need to produce and register a new deed. One whose terms of ownership are more complicated than “I have the originals”.

None of us are solicitors, of course. But, back in Macridi, I spent enough time copying and proofreading documents like these that I have a general idea of what needs to be done. I just need the time to do the work.

And that takes us to the second issue: the citadel is a mess.

A couple of days ago, we spent half a day doing some cleanup work, but those were just the first steps down a very long road. We have exterior walls that have crumbled in four places, leaving gaping holes in the fortress—it’s not much of a fortress if anyone can just walk in—a courtyard filled with muck and stagnant water, decaying ramparts, collapsed stairs that previously led to said ramparts, a collapsed stairwell that formerly led to the lower level, and the stairs to Alseta’s ring, which are choked with rubble from said collapsed stairs. Oh, and years of exposure to the elements have left us with water damage, warped doors, rotting furniture, and just about every kind of mud, mildew, mold, and fungus imaginable.

Truth be told, I don’t even know where to start with all of this. Part of me wants to curl up into a corner somewhere and just will it away. And, no, Iskaryn, I don’t need you to tell me what’s wrong with that. You wanted me to write down how I feel, remember? Well, that is how I feel.

And then there is the final issue: Alseta’s Ring is sitting in our basement. Who are we going to tell, when are we going to tell them, and what are we going to say when we do? No one is in agreement on the answers to any of these questions. If anything, it feels like we have more opinions than people to hold them.

I’m of the opinion that this thing affects everyone in Isger, much less Breachill, and that we can’t just sit on a secret like this. But others point out that the Hellknights did exactly that, and no one was the wiser for it. After all, no one knew how to activate it, right? Except it was inactive until, suddenly, it wasn’t. The Cinderclaws did figure out how to use it, and they even built plans around exploiting the advantage. So, no, we can’t just pretend that, because we don’t know how it works, no one has to know about it.

I don’t need this kind of stress. I just want to curl up into a corner and will it away.

Shut up, Iskaryn.