Private Tales A Life to Live

[Edric]

Rain drops splashed off of his chest, wind pressed against his soaked clothes, his chest rose and fell as he continued the sprint that he had been maintaining for almost two full days.

The meeting with Alistair and the other Dreadlord had spooked him, in a way. After Alliria he had thought that the trail had gone cold, and the sudden appearance of two more Dreadlords on his trail had driven him to get as far away from Peddlefoot as possible. The ship had been burned, though luckily his pursuers would only know the complete destination.

He had considered trying to find another, but in his paranoia he had found his own two feet the best method of escape.

So Edric chose to run.

Every step was fueled by his magics, drawn from from the plants, trees, animals, and insects nearby. For two days he had not stopped to rest, sleep, or eat. Allowing the entropy within him to sustain the forced march. The Rogue Dreadlord had no idea how many miles he had covered, nor how much further he had to go. All he thought about were those who might still be chasing him, those who might be on his tail.

He did not fear them, no. He feared what they might make him do. Alistair's trick had been terrifying. He had absolutely no idea what his former Classmate had done, but the feeling of his magic becoming nothing less than ravenous had been utterly horrific. That insatiable, relentless hunger that grabbed at Edric and pulled him towards something he did not want to be; a monster.

So he ran.

As far, and as fast as he could.

 

[Chasmine]

Chasmine had gone silent again once she knew he'd gotten safely away from the Peddlefoot port. Knowing he'd managed himself in that situation without causing violence or death was reassuring to her, because Chas wasn't certain she could do this journey with someone who lacked humanity completely. Whether or not it had been due to her gentle persuasion she couldn't say, but it hardly mattered now.

"Edric," her voice spoke to him after two days of reticence, preceded by the gentle pinging of cold from the amulet that signified ... some kind of activity within. He'd traveled into an area that ran parallel to a flow of the ley lines, giving Chasmine a new source of easy energy to pull from. It would allow her to interact more directly, but she wasn't about to try and keep up with him while manifested.

"I want to speak with you ... will you stop and find a place to rest?"

 

[Edric]

Her voice ringing through his head nearly caused Edric to trip. Chasmine had stayed almost entirely quiet through the last two days, and the sudden interruption of his concentration threw him off. His feet half kicked out from beneath him, catching on the dirt only just in time to stop him from falling on his face.

"Agh-" He cursed in his head quietly as he found the bottom of his boots once more. The sprint falling into a run and quickly transitioning into a run.

"One..." Edric breathed, not realizing just how short his breath had grown during his time sprinting. "Second."

The Rogue Dreadlord said as he scanned the surrounding Forrest of the Allirian Reach. In the distance he could already see the looming mountains of the Spine, but for now a cave or something of the sort was out of question. After a mere minute of searching he found what he was looking for though; a massive fallen tree.

Quickly he moved to duck beneath it, moving out of the rain for the first time in three days as he slipped beneath it's shelter. His chest rising and falling, head swimming as he finally sat himself down and leaned against the fallen trunk. "Okay."

He said, letting out a breath. "What is it?"

 

[Chasmine]

Not that shelter made any difference to her, but Chasmine appreciated the fact that he found some for himself as she retreated from the amulet to pool her presence in the space before him. There her figure manifested, brighter and clearer than she'd been since they left Duncan and the others on that beach. She moved to take a seat on the ground before him, sitting on her knees and feet.

"First," she began gently so he would know there was more to follow, "I think what you did at the docks was very good of you. Proctoc Salak is a nice man and I am glad he gave you that chance to leave without harm."

There wasn't quite a smile on her face, but perhaps something closer to pride for him, "and I will not speak of the information you gave them."

 

[Edric]

Slowly his breathing came under control. Drawn back into focus as he rested. Eyes closing just long enough to be surprised when he opened them and found Chasmine sitting there.

"Oh." He intoned quietly as she offered her small bit of praise. The Rogue Dreadlord flustering slightly as she continued. Were he a different man, he might have blushed at the approval she expressed, but instead he simply looked down at the ground.

Not quite sure what to do with himself. "Thank you..."

Edric said quietly, never having really considered the consequences of what would have happened if she did tell Gilram. The Archon probably would have killed him, or...at least tried. He still wasn't sure what would happen if the man used his magic to try to end his life.

"I-" He began, and then snapped his jaw shut, frowning. "I'm not really sure what I'm doing, Chas."

He admitted quietly.

 

[Chasmine]

Chasmine watched him quietly for a few moments, head tilting slightly as she considered him.

"You are resting," she replied simply, though someone more philosophical could have looked deeper into that response. That Edric was not just resting from his escape, but from his life within Vel Anir. If Chas meant for it to be construed in such a way, she would not elaborate.

"I also wanted to thank you for being kind to my Aunt and allowing me the time I needed to find answers. Unfortunately..." the ghost cast her gaze aside toward the inclement grey skies filled with the streaking of rain just beyond their little shelter, "I need more time to understand what my grandmother told me. But she did say something concerning you."

Looking back to him, her somber expression shifted slightly, hinting at something like compassion, "You were right. You did once have a soul and it was taken from you when you were a babe. It is no longer of this world, but has passed on to the afterlife."

 

[Edric]

A chortle escaped Edric, his head shaking as Chasmine 'explained' what he was doing. The smile on his face continuing as she offered her thanks...only to immediately fade as she explained what her grandmother had told her.

Shockingly, he did not respond with rage.

The last time, when she had given him such news, he had fallen into a frenzy. Before awaking once more he'd slaughtered his way through half a dozen nobles. This time though, this time he just sat there. Listening to the sound of raindrops falling on his makeshift roof.

"Huh." He said quietly, not entirely sure what to do with the information.

Not entirely sure what to...feel. "So I'm..."

Edric frowned for a moment, glancing down at his hands. "Dead?"

Fingers slowly furled and unfurled. Muscles flexing, tendons shifting, everything working just as it was supposed to. He believed Chasmine. There was no reason to lie to him, and after spending so much time with her so close he knew that she wouldn't. Even if it meant sparing him a worse pain.

A frown touched his face, and a thought flickered through his mind. Perhaps the first good one he had ever had.

"Chas." He said quietly. "You don't know how we're going to bring you back yet, right?"

 

[Chasmine]

"Not dead," she replied gently, "people can exist without souls..." but she hadn't an appropriate word to describe what sort of existence that really was. Chas did not feel confident enough in her knowledge of or experience with such states, nor did she feel it right to compare him to a lich or a vampire.

What she did know, however, was that Edric seemed to be the exception to the norm. She had seen what having ones soul ripped from their mortal coil did to a being and it wasn't pretty. There was no way to know how Edric had survived as well as he had except for the presence of his magic. Something that provided him life and vigor in place of a soul, perhaps?

The ghost frowned, looking down to her hands that rested in her lap, "I have a notion of what is required, but I am uncertain how to achieve it."

In a way that would not render her own soul completely tainted by the hubris and inhumanity of so many others.

 

[Edric]

Edric nodded his head, not quite understanding how someone could exist without a soul but figuring he was doing it well enough.

At least sometimes.

The question though wasn't what was at the forefront of his mind. He paused for a moment, letting Chasmine glance down at her ghostly hands. He frowned for a moment, wondering if it was even his place to ask. Then took a breath. "When I bring you back."

Because he would, there was no question of if. He had made a promise.

"Do you think..." He paused. "Do you think you can bring my soul with you?"

Edric asked, preparing for a no, but hoping for a yes.

 

[Chasmine]

For as energized as she felt now, Chasmine suddenly felt the weight of her emotional exhaustion settling upon her shoulders and mind. Edric was so sure of her return that it might've seeded hope, but with the words from her grandmother she felt more lost than anything.

His question garnered a regretful glance upward, "I am sorry Edric," Chasmine began, feeling an overwhelming sense of shame that he was so set on helping her where she could not help him, "but because it has already passed on, I cannot retrieve it."

At least, she didn't believe that she could. She had ventured deep and far into the spirit realm, but the the afterlife was another realm entirely - one fully removed from the planes of mortal living. Chas could help usher souls into the afterlife, but she'd never passed through herself and now that she thought about it, she wasn't even sure that she could pass over.

"My grandmother said something else as well," much time had been given to wondering if telling him this was the right thing to do, but for some reason it felt wrong not to, "that you and I are bonded. It formed the first time I possessed your body. So in a way... I have become your soul. She believed that is why you were able to make contact with me."

 

[Edric]

”Oh…” Edric said, the disappointment more than clear on his features. Still, oddly, he felt no rage.

Perhaps because in a sense, he had hit a wall. He still wanted to get away from Vel Anir, still wanted to go to the Wylds, but Edric had no idea why other than the fact it was the furthest place from home he could think of. A part of him had hoped that this would be the actual answer, that while helping Chasmine he could help himself. It had been a small flicker of a dream. One that he could not blame Chasmine for taking away.

He had still wished for it all the same, because the truth was…Edric had no idea what he was doing.

What he wanted.

Those thoughts spun around in his mind, his expression muted and blank as he wondered if he had made the right choice in leaving. If he had ever made the right choice. For a moment he seemed trapped within his thoughts, eyes staring down at his hands.

Head tipping up only as Chasmine mentioned something else. The frown pulling at his lips shifting ever so slightly I to a neutral expression as she explained what her grandmother had said. ”Huh.”

Edric said quietly, not sure how to take the news.

”That's ironic.” He said softly, reflecting on the unexpected fact. His history with Chasmine. ”Doubt anyone back home would have seen that coming.”

The Rogue said with a wry smile. ”But I guess it makes sense.”

Edric continued softly, finding a shocking amount of acceptance within Chas’ words. ”When you possess me is just about the only time I feel calm. When my magic doesn't…”

Hunt? Reach out? He wasn't entirely sure how to put it.

 

[Chasmine]

This bond of theirs was entirely unexpected for Chasmine as well, though she was not thinking backwards like Edric was. She was not considering the irony of their history or what others would have thought of it. No, she was more concerned about what it might me for if she did ever manage to return to the living. What would that do to the bond? Nothing? Something?

Would it effect Edric? Hurt him? Hurt her?

As a free and wandering soul it mattered not if she had become bonded to another's body, but if she returned in her own? How did one soul maintain a connection with two bodies? Would it prevent her from being able to return?

Chasmine's hands rolled into fists in her lap as she fought back a welling of rare but potent emotion.

"I don't..." she began, brows furrowed tightly, then felt a curious pause at his last words. She blinked and looked up to Ed again, "I make you calm?"

 

[Edric]

Edric nodded, surprised that Chasmine hadn't known.

Perhaps he had simply assumed that she had felt it too, or that possessing him would give her some knowledge of his own mind and emotions. He didn't know why, though it did make him realize that he had never actually asked how it felt for her.

Still, she had asked, and he would answer. ”It's the only thing that ever has.”

He continued quietly.

It was not as though he were a creature of seething range and chaos. Edric felt a spectrum of emotion just like every other man or woman. He could laugh, he could cry, he could probably even love.

But always the feeling was tainted. His magics were not like others. Edric did send the entropy that emanated out from him into the world, it was just the opposite. He had to constantly reign it in. Pulling back the tides of thieving decay and producing an almost constant underlying anxiety and anger. Feelings that at times he lost himself in. As had happened in that village, as had nearly happened with what Alistair had done.

When Chasmine possessed him, his magic, and he, calmed. As if he were no longer a wounded animal fighting to survive.

 

[Chasmine]

What should have been something good among all the bad only unsettled her more. Chasmine's expression fell again, a realization seeming to settle into her eyes as they left Edric, "I see."

"Then perhaps..."

The ghost shut her eyes tightly and released a despondent, crestfallen sigh.

"...it is best that I do not return at all."

 

[Edric]

Edric blinked. "What?"

He said, not really understanding why Chasmine would say such a thing.

"Why?" It wasn't that he was bring purposefully obstinate, but to his mind their bargain was already set in stone. There was no changing it. He had made a promise, and that promise would be kept.

 

[Chasmine]

Chasmine's lips formed a thin line on her face as she bit back the strong desire to simply break down and cry. She couldn't really cry as a ghost ... not like one could as a human, though the emotion remained the same it lacked the means of being able to express itself like an artist without a canvas. Instead she swallowed, trying to remind herself that learned helplessness had gotten her nowhere in life except into the influence of those who would abuse it.

"My grandmother told me the only way for me to return as myself, whole and alive, is through tremendous sacrifice," she felt the rock of pain in her chest, or the equivalent thereof anyway, and with it her resolve slowly slipping from her fingers like smoke. Her grandmother had not elaborated or spoke of how or what that sacrifice involved, but there was truly only a few things that Chasmine could think of that would balance out a life returning against the natural flow of things.

"There is always a cost," Chas shook her head, looking down at her hands again, "and I already knew I could not be the person to pay it. I can't-" she shuddered at the thought of it, of how her life valued against others.

"I'm not worth that sacrifice."

 

[Edric]

Edric frowned for a moment, seeing the pain flicker across Chasmine's face. He could have sworn there would have been tears had she still been alive. The frown on his face twisted into an unreadable mask as she continued to explain, his fingers slowly drawing up as he straightened his back against the hard wood of the fallen tree.

For a few moments he stayed silent, and then finally he spoke. "So I'll pay it."

He said simply.

Edric knew what she was saying. He wasn't the brightest of their class, but he wasn't a moron either. A life for a life was a principle that he well understood, and though Chasmine had already implied it was more than one, he hardly seemed to care.

"I'm going to kill anyway, Chasmine." He knew himself well enough not to deny it. "I know that, you know that, fuck, all of Vel Anir knows that."

Slowly his hand raised from his knee, as if offering it to her. "Let it be for something good, let it be for you."

He told her. "I think you're worth the sacrifice."

 

[Chasmine]

Nothing about Edric's offer made any of this easier. Chasmine did not look up at him as he spoke, but maintained a hard stare at the ground between them. The fact that he was going to kill anyway felt inspid and damnable. He didn't have to kill - he could walk away from that life. He'd already walked away from Vel Anir, he could make an entirely new person of himself and never look back. He could find peace.

She could help him find peace. Or something close to it. Then maybe she could find a way to pass on... or maybe she could find a way to complete the bond with him and give him the soul he needed to keep that peace. Chasmine Grey could disappear from this world, forgotten already by so many ... what difference did it make?

No one cared if she came back.

No one had even bothered to search for her. She was unwanted and for certain the Academy had been relieved when she'd gone missing. An answer to a problem they would have had to come up with some creative solution for on their own. How to rid themselves of the useless girl.

"Don't lie to me Edric," her frown deepened and brow furrowed, "everyone has lied to me. No one has ever cared what happened to me. I was too stupid to see it when I was alive but I've had a lot of time to reflect in my death."

Her gaze shot back up at him, vehemently torn by anger, grief, and regret, "I won't be lied to anymore! I am nothing - I have always been nothing to everyone, including you! You said it yourself. I DIDN'T BELONG!"

Then her face split into a grimace, a face that would have readily shed tears of anguish at all the misfortunes of her short life and hardships of her prolonged death, "I don't belong anywhere. How is it any different now?!"

 

[Edric]

Edric's face flickered in shock as Chasmine offered her rebuke, her face drawing from anger to anguish as she made her grief clear. The young Rogue's own features shifted into a mask, his spectral companions accusations causing his stomach to twist as the truth of her words stung into him.

Her shouts echoed out beneath the fallen tree, masking the rain for a time as her anger absorbed Edric's every sense.

The words seemed to ring in her ear, echoing out long after he could hear the rains once more. The hard patter of the storm ringing out as for a few moments he sat there, stunned. His lips pressed to a thin line, and an ache that he couldn't quite identify sat within his chest.

The hand that he had offered dropped to the ground, pulling back as he stared at Chasmine's ghostly form.

For a moment, it seemed that he would not respond. That he had nothing to offer or say. A minute passed by, almost two before he finally spoke. "I'm...I'm different now."

He said softly.

"When I said that, I still believed in...in what they told us." Edric began to explain quietly, glancing at the ground. "I thought we were meant to be soldiers, killers, murderers. I thought...you shouldn't be there, because that wasn't you."

A frown pulled at his lips as he looked up at her.

"But..." His lips pressed together, pausing for a moment as he thought about what he was going to say. "I wasn't...I wasn't wrong, Chasmine. Just stupid."

He said, anger at himself flickering through his voice. "None of us belonged there."

Edric insisted, a strength growing in his voice.

"They took us from our families, our homes. Lied to those who gave us up." He remembered Chasmine's aunt, the fact that she had said they'd thought the Academy would help her. Disgust flickered through his chest. "They ripped us away from where we were supposed to be and took away what...everyone else has; Family, friends, connection."

A memory flickered through his mind. The beatings he had inflicted on Henk, Al, and the others. How the Proctor's had used him, how they had stoked resentment between all of them and always pushed them to the very edge. "I don't have anyone Chasmine. No aunts and uncles, no grandmothers, no parents...A sister somewhere, I think, but even she might be dead."

He frowned, realizing that he was rambling.

"You are my family." Edric declared, his eyes beginning to well as he stared at her. "You, Ralene, Henk, Alistair, Davi and all the others. You're the only family that I have."

"I didn't join Gilram because I believed in his cause. I'm not sure I believe in any cause." The words slipped from his tongue before he could even think, a strange sort of dam breaking as he continued.

"I joined because I wanted to bring the others home." 'Home' what did that even mean? Edric wasn't sure he ever knew. It wasn't Vel Anir, not anymore, but...it had to be somewhere. "And when I found you there...I knew that meant you too."

Edric frowned, looking down at the ground. "I'm not lying to you, Chas."

He said, looking back up at her. "I'm going to bring you back, I'm going to bring you home."

 

[Chasmine]

A great deal of revelation lay within the words spoken by someone Chasmine had once feared beyond measure. Edric had been cruel and every bit what she knew to be a soulless person at the Academy. He'd had no sense of humanity or empathy. Knew nothing of sympathy or mercy. Could barely understand what it meant to live. He'd been a tool, nay - a weapon and nothing more. That he was only just learning now said a lot about not just himself, but the institution within which he was raised.

Even still, how did the Academy turn out people like Gilram or Duncan? Two men who were perfectly capable of feeling and caring. Of showing concern for their fellow people, and not just simply fellow Dreadlords. There were others among Gilram's ilk she had met that seemed to follow that same path, but Chasmine had not spent nearly as much time with them. Even among Gilram's crew, she was still an outcast. Many did not trust her.

Maybe they shouldn't.

Chasmine wanted to tell Edric that she wasn't his family. Wanted to yell at him. Wanted to let loose the surge of pain and anger she'd kept buried within for everything she'd been through, but she felt deflated by his last words. Home. An idea many of them clung to and one Chas had desperately been wanting for, for so many years now. For some time she thought the Academy was home if only for the reason that she could think of no other place beyond her own dorm room that felt safe. Even now, even under Gilram's protection, she had yet to find a the feeling of security anywhere else in such a way that felt like a home.

Home is where the heart is. But where was the heart? Chasmine shrunk at the thought, feeling a deep and hollow longing for something intangible.

"Where is home, Edric?"

 

[Edric]

”I don't know.” Edric answered almost immediately, knowing that he could not give anything better than the truth. Knowing that he didn't have anything better.

”I honestly don't know.” He repeated. ”But I'm looking.”

Edric said softly. "And I think we can find it better together.”

 

[Chasmine]

If it had been anyone else Chasmine may have suspected an act. Placating words to get a desired outcome. But this was Edric, and why in all of Arethil he felt the need to help her was beyond even Chasmine's wild imagination. She would not have suspected him capable of acting so convincingly as to appear about to shed tears of his own.

Edric didn't cry and while she was not certain he was incapable of lying, if he could he would not be able to do it so well. That or he had them all fooled for far longer than they even knew.

So despite her mind screaming at her that this was all a ruse, a repeat of everything that had come before time and time again, Chas took hold of a tiny shred of hope that remained and decided she would give it one last chance. The ghost silently shuffled across the small space between them until she was close enough to reach his hand and reached out her own as he had done just minutes ago.

"...okay," she offered him plaintively, "together."

 

[Edric]

Edric smiled.

His hand reaching out towards hers, palm slowly wrapping around her fingers. "So."

As his fingers wrapped around hers, Edric could swear that he could feel her. Touch her. His muscles flexing ever so slightly as he tugged her closer. Pulling her close as he leaned back against the ancient rotted bark of the fallen tree.

"Tell me what I have to do." Edric said, setting down his new path. "Who do I have to kill to get you back?"

He didn't know how many, he didn't know if they had to be innocent or guilty. Edric didn't care, He had made his promise, he had said what he would do, and he would do it. There wasn't any question, and a new priority now set in his mind.

Had he run to get away? Or had he simply been seeking the answer to another question.

 

[Chasmine]

There would be no forgetting the moment he'd first made actual contact with her in that prison cell. She remembered the sensation of his hand in her hair and cradling her face with unfiltered clarity. How she'd been overcome with the desperation for physical contact she'd been locked away from. Even now, that same feeling welled up again, filling her chest with a dull but powerful ache and her eyes with the sting of tears that would never manifest.

Her instincts were to fight it off, as she had back in the cell, and not give in. To protect herself from further attachment and the inevitable abandonment that always seemed to follow. But Edric tugged and Chasmine did not resist. Her figure shifted toward him and with just a moment of hesitation, turned into the arm and settled down beside him, leaning back against his chest beneath his arm.

Did he still feel that sense of calm he had felt back then? Or had such a thing dissipated over time?

What was it that instigated the connection? Was it driven by his desire to make contact alone?

So many questions she could not bring herself to voice. Especially not after he spoke his own. A frown darkened the ghost's ephemeral face as she tugged his arm around her like she might a blanket, seeking comfort there she wasn't sure she would find.

"People," she replied with a wavering sigh of disgust and horror at what she was telling him, "many... many people."

"Only the lives of others equal to mine ... plants and animals won't work. I don't know the number but I am certain it is many more than I think in order for me to regain my living body."

 

[Edric]

Edric's muscular arms wrapped around Chasmine one at a time, slipping around her ghostly form as though she were just as real as anyone else. His expression flickered for a brief moment, considering the weight of her words and what it would mean.

"Okay." He said after a moment.

There had never been a chance that he wouldn't agree. His promise had been made, and no matter the cost he would keep it.

Edric was no stranger to killing. Dozens, perhaps even hundreds of people had already ended their lives at his hands. He had not lied when he'd told Chasmine there would be more, at least if they were for her it would mean something. "That probably would have been easier back in Vel Anir."

He said, not able to help the small chuckle that shook his chest.

"But I'll do it all the same." Edric said softly, determined to follow through. To bring Chasmine back and find home with her. "I don't think going back is a choice, right now."

There'd be ten Dreadlords on his tail the hour he showed his face. No, they needed some place else. The Wylds didn't have many people, Alliria had it's own army, there were those Ogre's in Tyr... "Oh."

A thought flickered through his mind.

"In the north." Edric said, reaching for the beginnings of an idea. "There's Orc tribes there and a lot of war."

Right? That was what Maui had said. "Orcs are people, right? Or close enough."