Silence - Chapter 42 (Patreon)

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"Until such time that the Foglands are deemed safe, the Haargate shall henceforth be shut! If any seek to use the Haargate, they must first gain a Writ of Permission from an Initiate of the Order. All others are forbidden, on pain of death!" The Inquisitor who spoke was old, but possessed of a vibrancy that couldn't be denied. He jabbed a finger at the gates. "Worse than death stalks those forests! We have come to eradicate that threat, so worry no more!"

The early morning sun glinted off of white-enameled plate and golden sunbursts as the edict rang out. Harn leaned casually against a lamppost, his armor left behind for once, and scowled through the tumultuous crowd. Cheers chased boos, while the sharp eyes of the Acolytes fruitlessly sought out the latter. A crowd this big, no Apprentice Tier redcloak was spotting anything worthwhile. Still, that didn't stop their six deep formation from glowering at everything from behind their sallet helms.

Behind them all, the massive red-gold edifice of the Wall stretched into the sky, bigger than every building in Haarwatch save the Eyrie itself. Doors slammed shut, made of the same orichalcum as the Wall, and brilliant streamers of Mana flared, so potent that even the Mana blind like Harn could see them. The doors were sealed.

"If you wish to obtain a Writ of Permission, line up to the left side of the thoroughfare to begin!"

"Damn redcloaks," Harn cursed. "First they lock us out, then they start comin' for folks. Mark my words."

"Not questioning it," Yan said. He tugged his hood up over his bald head, though it was unnecessary. The man was a head shorter than most in the crowd. "Just keep it down. Last thing we want is attention."

"Aye, aye. Let's begone from this place. Ain't completing any more jobs now." Harn started pushing his way through the crowd. After glimpsing his scarred face, most folk let him. They had come down to the Haargate to make good on the Hunting jobs they'd managed to find, but the Inquisition had blocked off the gates with their little soldiers.

"We aren't gonna try to get a Writ?" Yan ran a finger through his mustache, eyeing the gate.

"You wanna be on their little list, Yan? So they can harass us for the priviledge of using the Foglands?" Harn asked. "Twin's teeth, I don't."

"Think we should leave? Make a run for Setoria?"

Harn grunted. "We'll leave that up to Cal. You and me, we're no thinkers. We're here to kill and to look good doin' it."

Yan laughed as they slipped into out of the crowd. "Not arguin' with that!"


* * *


Cal did want to leave, but before they had even gathered up their belongings, word reached them that the Sunrise Gate—the lone access to the Verdant Pass and distant Setoria—was also closed. Restricted, it was said, though only Inquisitors could be seen moving back and forth.

The news did not sit well with the woman, but more than conniving redcloaks had her attention. She'd learned—far, far too late—that Evie and Harn had slipped into the Eyrie and stolen Magda's body. Her rage and fear were tempered heavily by the enormity of what they'd done, and what it meant. There'd been more than a little hectic hand wringing in the week that followed, most of it her own. Cal had been convinced the Guild would have come down on them like a hammer. Yet only silence had met her anxiety. Either Magda's body hadn't meant much to them—which infuriated her in ways she couldn't fully speak to—or the hadn't noticed.

Or something worse.

Cal shook herself, pulling from her memories and anxious contemplation. Today, at least, was to be an end to all of that. The lot of them stood in the center of an abandoned lot in the Dust Quarter, ringed about a pyre that was wreathed in ribbons. She looked to her right, where Evie stood, dressed in mourning silver slashed with crimson. All of her team was, Harn, Yan, Bodie, every single one. Most had only managed a shawl or kerchief to mark themselves, but all wore it with a solemn pride. Evie glanced back at her, a sad smile on her face, and Cal squeezed her hand.

"You did good, Evie," Cal said. "Mags would've been proud."

The teen—young woman, she corrected herself—worked her jaw, but nothing came out. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. "I hope so."

Mags' body had been laid down atop the pyre, her body fitted with plate armor and the scrapped remnant of her mithril shield. She looked waxy and gaunt, having lost something more than just her life in the intervening months. Stasis arrays had kept her body from rotting away, but there was a...diminishment that tore Cal's heart in half. It wasn't Mags that they watched over now, she knew that in her Spirit. But Evie needed this, Siva's grace, so did Harn. The stoic warrior was crying, a man she'd seen take a lance to the chest without blinking.

Evie stepped up and whispered something to her sister, something no one else made any attempt to hear. Advanced Perception or no, there were things that should remain private. She returned in a few short minutes, her eyes red and shoulders shaking. It was Cal's turn next.

Cal lifted her hand, looking at her own triangular pendant, one that had been returned to her by Magda when they had reunited.

Name: Twin-Touched Locket
Type: Enchanted Accessory
Lore: Used by many to keep images of their loved ones close. Always paired.

"You should wear this, Mags," Cal managed to say before she couldn't say anything else. Silently, she took off the locket and placed it around Magda's throat. Her fingers trembled. "I almost can't bear to leave it here," she laughed, quietly. "I wish I knew where your's went...I wish so much had been different."

She breathed unsteadily. "I don't blame you. I always wanted to say that. I don't blame you for running or saying no or...I wish I could, being mad might've made this easier." She put two fingers to Magda's cheek. Tears splashed against her, but Cal left them. "I love you. I'll miss you, forever.

"Go into the Ethereal, Mags." She stepped back, wiping at her eyes. "Karp?"

"Aye, Cal." The bearded archer lifted his bow, arrow nocked, and whispered a soft word. The tip of the arrow ignited with a green-gold fire. He loosed it into the pyre, and the entire thing caught into a six foot tall column of green-gold flame.

Later that night, Cal briefly recalled someone singing a dirge, but couldn't remember who; instead it all passed in a numb blur, until only Evie and Cal remained nearby, watching the pyre burn away. They hadn't talked in a half glass, but it was a comfortable sort of silence. Companionable. Sisterly, she hoped.

"I gave her my half of the locket," Cal admitted, before she realized what she was saying.

"What?"

"I just...I wanted her to have it. She lost her own." Cal swallowed. Her throat still hurt. "You know, it was the only portrait I had of her. I should have given it to you. Gods, I don't know why I did it. I thought, maybe—"

"Dunno that Maggie ever believed in the gods much, but she liked to tell me stories of it," Evie said, interrupting her. Cal let her own words die, her own guilt silencing her. "Of the place our parents might've went, the light and eternal rest of the Ethereal. It was nice, maybe a bit too nice, but for a sad kid it was the right thing to say." She smiled. "Maggie wasn't always the best with words, but she got it right with that one."

Evie laughed again, and it was a bright thing in the dark. Cal couldn't help her answering smile. "She also told me about the other places. The divine realm where heroes go to fight and drink and eat, forever. That it's hard to get into the Hall of Heroes. Hard as anything ever done. But if anyone made it there, Maggie did." Her voice turned fierce at the end, only spoilt by a faint crack. "Let her carry it with her a while. I've got my memory to keep her alive, yeah?"

Evie looked into the dwindling fire, watching a point that still blazed hotter than the rest and knowing it for the enchanted locket.

"Maybe now we can get there too. Just follow the light."

They held each other until the pyre burnt out.


* * *


The false sun was hot overhead as the last of the subjects were moved into the grounds of the old keep. Elder Teine felt none of the heat, of course, but he knew it wouldn't do for his experiments to be blistered by the cruel orb above. The desert type of the Domain below Haarwatch meant it was always boiling hot during the day cycle and freezing cold during the night cycle, and he had instructed his assistants to take every precaution to keep their subjects safe.

He sighed as he walked the battlements, peering out over the rolling dunes of the landscape. He had been forced to move his entire operation thanks to the arrival of the cursed Inquisition, as not even High Elder Fairbanks had spine enough to stand up to those puffed up popinjays.

Redcloaks. Pfah!

At least with his experiments in the Guild-controlled Domain, he could access them fairly easily. It would not impact his project too much, or so he hoped.

"Sir! Elder, sir!" Someone came running up to him, utilizing some sort of hopping movement Skill. It was ungainly, but useful Teine supposed. Perhaps if it were applied to—he recalled that the messenger was speaking and began to listen.

"—survivor escaped and attacked us! One of the Bronze Ranks was bitten!"

"Really?" Teine's interest was piqued. "What will happen, do you think?"

The messenger looked at him with eyes wide with fear. "Uhm, uh, he will be healed?"

"In due time. In due time," Teine clapped the boy upon the back, neatly staggering him. "Restrain the subject and the Bronze Rank. Use elision collars if the inscribed chains aren't enough, but keep them docile."

"The Bronze Rank as well, sir? He's only injured—"

"Do as I said, child," Teine snapped. The boy shrank under his intense gaze, so fearful even without Teine utilizing his Spirit to press him. "Do not make me ask again."

The boy scurried off, so afraid he didn't leap once. Teine nodded in satisfaction. Yes, he could accomplish much in the Domain, where he was free of oversight. Without the High Elder breathing down his back, looking for results, Teine would see miracles done.

Screams came from below, Human and distinctly otherwise.

Yes. Much to do. Much to discover.


* * *


"Get in there!"

The Envoy stumbled into the cell below the sands. It was dark there, but its eyes could easily pick out a single other Human sitting there. It chose to fall, to give the impression of weakness to the guards. It worked, and the Envoy could feel the guard sneering at its back.

"Didn't like that, did ya? You try and bite any others and you'll see what true pain feels like, eh?" The guard rapped the bars of the cell with a flanged mace and stomped off. Another guard stepped up only seconds later, with two trays with some water, and a mealy sort of slop. Their food, the Envoy hazarded.

The Envoy rolled over, still keenly aware of the other prisoner's eyes on its form. It reached a tentative hand to its neck, where a wide elision collar had been fitted, a device designed to shut off the flow of Mana to and from one's core and weaken one's Temper. It was largely ineffectual for one such as the Envoy, but these fools did not know that. It resembled a Human, after all.

"Hey uh," said the other prisoner with a cough. It was an Elf and he looked quite sick. "You okay, pal?"

"I am...I will be fine." The Envoy sat up with a feigned grunt and settled against the dusty stone wall. "Everything will be fine. My Father is coming, after all."

"Tch, you some nobleman's kid? I uh, don't know how to tell you this, but nobles won't stand up to the Guild. Not in this town." The Elf spat out some blood and what looked like a tooth. "Teine's got em all wrapped around his finger."

The Envoy briefly considered educating the Elf on its Father, but there would be time for that later. For now, it stood and walked to the food. Bent over the bowls of mush, it accessed its core, the surging potency stored within its chest that its Father shaped from base metals into transcendent creation. There, among the inaccessible Mana it held, there was a reservoir of blood-red rot. It bubbled and hissed, kept separate from his core space by the ingenious script work of its Father and contained with a squarish device built into his side. The Envoy vented the rot out, directly into the mush.

"Here, you eat," the Envoy said to the man. "You need your strength and I'm fine for now."

The Elf grunted a desultory thanks at the Envoy and took both portions, shoveling the lumpy gruel into his fleshy orifice. If he noticed the rot, he made not mention of it.

Only moments later, the Envoy could see it working, just as the infection had already spread among the others. The Envoy wasn't the source, not originally, but it certainly had helped it along. Its Father was quite interested in what the rot could do, and the Envoy could admit to itself a certain giddy interest.

Primordial Essence was hard to come by, after all.


* * *


Light and darkness, color and sound, all of it had ceased having any sort of meaning at all. Felix and Pit were stretched like taffy, pulled through something so infinitely powerful there had only been a single moment of terror before numb shock set in. Stars whirled by, planets maybe, lands of strange things and stranger entities, too many to count, too much. Too much.

Then, a pause.

The world froze, cracked, as something titanic considered him and his Companion. Sense blind, Felix barely held onto his self, but could feel it still. A leviathan in a sea of blood. A mountain as big as a world. A figure, draped in chains and shadow, one that dwarfed it all. Eyes that burned, like a living storm.

A screaming voice, Intent and thought more than anything else. I survived, you colossal bitch! I survived and escaped! The Maw railed into the nothing, into the eye of storms. Not in terror, but defiance.

That storm came at them like a comet, so fast and so hot it threatened to burn everything that was Felix. To hollow him out as sure as a Manaship would have. Lightning and a relentless flood of crimson darkness crashed over them, choking the Maw's laughing visage, and sending Felix spiraling outward.

A wild fall that made the luminescent Void around him crackle and shatter. A shimmering explosion consumed everything, pulling him core first through the eye of a needle. Out. Out into light.

"Pathless...anyone...if anyone can hear me," someone wept. "Please...save me."

Sunlight, and the smell of leaves. Felix felt his feet hit solid ground, all of his aches and pains coming with him. There was a hissing noise nearby, and a terrified gasp, but he couldn't be concerned with either. Instead, he focused on the blue box notification that dominated his vision.

Congratulations!
You Have Returned To The Continent!

"Finally."

[END BOOK 2]