Private Tales Alive Twice

[Risen Soleil Verdane]

In Marris but one emotion was evoked, plainly evident even beneath his wild tussle of hair and beard: concerned love. For all Marris's unpleasantness, his surliness, his abrasiveness to nearly everything and everyone around him, still there remained that one ember in an otherwise cold heart.

"My little Soleil? She needs me?"

Without hesitation he rolled up his sleeve and thrust out his naked arm toward Heller.

"Take it! Take it! Take everything you need, Dreadlord!"

Rennick held up his hand. "Not here. It's not necessary here." And then he added, "It may need to be fresh."

Now Rennick didn't know if that was true or not; Heller was the expert. But it didn't matter. Prudence dictated that they secure Marris and bring him to the site. That way, Heller would have ample amounts of material for his magic.

Everything he might need, as Marris himself said.

Kian Heller

 

[Kian Heller]

Fresh, yes.

The distance from here in Vel Yuna to where Soleil was to be ressurected was too great of a distance to have anything go wrong now. Kian sighed as he approached Marris, shaking his head as his gloved hand pushed his offered arm down.

"Not here." He gave a small smile, mesnt to be seen as friendly, but Kian was unsure if he was about to put this man through something grievous. "You need to come with us. Help can only be given back in Vel Anir."

He looked back, and Heller gave Rennick a heavy frown.

"We need to hurry back. Our time is running out, and if we miss our chance now, she may take more convincing to return."

Heller needed to keep his words vague. He needed Marris' cooperation on this, a surety that all of this would not go to waste.

"Well," Kian turned back to Marris, offering a hand as he smiled wider, "ready to help your granddaughter?"

 

[Risen Soleil Verdane]

Marris nodded vigorously.

"Yes. Let's go, and let's go without a moment's delay!"

* * * * *

VEL ANIR
THE GARRISON COMPLEX​

Again the Complex had been given over to Heller and his work, the Guardsmen granted leave for the duration. The time was approaching, Rennick thought, to see if this would happen or not. If the latter, then an intolerable setback would be incurred, and Sabien Diemut's machinations—for Rennick's intuition said that there were some, and that their wheels were surely turning—would be left unchallenged for longer. No doubt also that the treasonous Diemut would gorge himself on his own supposed cleverness.

"The stage is yours, Kian," said Rennick when the three of them stood in the training ground and by the ritual site. "Work your art."

And with that, Rennick again departed, giving the Dreadlord the space and time he would need for the final act of his magic.

Marris paid little mind to Rennick. He seemed not even to notice the strangeness of the ritual site, nor the lack of his granddaughter being present. Perhaps he had concocted in his head some kind of satisfactory story already, one that explained everything, or almost everything, and what details his eyes could see or his ears could hear just slotted themselves without difficulty into this fancy.

His gaze looked not quite at Heller, but at angle to him, as if there were someone behind the Dreadlord. And Marris said, "My little Soleil. Grandpa brought you his blood. It's gonna be alright, Sol. It's gonna be alright."

Kian Heller

 

[Kian Heller]

Kian looked over his shoulder, saw nothing, but his magic and connection allowed him the glimpse of energies lingering at the site before the grave he had dug. "Now, friend, I will need you assistance on this. Your help will be appreciated as it will help your grand daughter." He turned back to Marris, a furrow between his brows. "You are willing, yes? Tying your life source to... helping Soleil?"

He beckoned Marris to follow, so that between them would be the patch of dirt loosely piled into the grave where a layer of sand rested. It used to be a girl, all those grains, but soon she will be here.

Returned.

Alive, once more.

"I will pass this knife to you, Marris. A slice on your palm should be enough blood." Medic kit waiting to staunch any more bleeding. "Then I will ask you to hold your hand over this earth. We will summon her, bring her home, and you will see her again." Kian plastered a smile, hoping he looked kind and gentle. It was unnatural for his face to hikd such muscles to appear that way, but any good Initiate that survived graduation and spent a couple of years playing spy in Amol Kalit taught him a few masks to wear.

Heller handed the knife to Marris by the blade. Ensuring the older gentleman could get a comfortable hold on the nondescript knife. The handle was wrapped in leather. The blade old and sharpened.

"I will call her the moment your blood touches the earth." Heller explained, now crouching to one knee and drawing a circle in the dirt.

Risen Soleil Verdane

 

[Risen Soleil Verdane]

...helping Soleil?

Marris looked to the Dreadlord after he spoke, those words like a kind of magic summoning his attention. At Heller's beckoning Marris followed, and he took the knife so offered. The elderly man held it in his hand, gazing at it for a while, and he came at last to say:

"There's not a lot of good that came out of my life. Not a lot of good that came out of my damn wife's belly either, that sluggard son of mine. I did what I could for Vel Anir and Vel Yuna, even if it wasn't much. But my little Soleil..."

He looked up to Heller then with the most intent and lucid gaze, like a madman renewed to sanity and purpose.

"...she's gonna do great things."

And with that Marris unflinchingly tore a red trench into his palm with the knife and did as instructed, holding his now injured hand over the earth and offering his dripping blood to the ritual site.

A crucial component now added. The same blood.

But there was one last thing, for perhaps Heller could feel that success was close at hand, and the one final offering was all that kept the veil between the dead and the living unbreached.

Life for life.

Kian Heller

 

[Kian Heller]

More... More...

It was the air that hung heavily here around him that whispered, or perhaps it smothered Heller so violently, it entered to his brain and left that message there. Seared into him.

A hunger like this, a demand of more...

It had been days now, and Heller had been channeling ever since. He felt weary of this world, the ever presence of the otherside wishing to claim him through his ability to bridge between both planes of existence.

He did not know Soleil, but now her reports began to make the most sense to him.

"Do you trust your granddaughter?" Heller cleared his throat, something in his throat scratching as he spoke. As if it were sand, as if Soleil was slowly returning to the living beneath the earth he had dug a hole into. "Would you... allow her to take the knife and guide it to provide more blood?"

This fucking nuts. He thought. Heller was a Dreadlord, had served with his family on running the many prisons in Vel Anir and beyond. Why was the idea of taking a life for another's striking him like this?

"If you trust her, leave the blade flat in your palm. Let her presence guide it."

Heller tore another piece of himself form the Living Realm and offered that tether to the girl haunting this site. Either she could use him to do the job, or reach that of her kin and do the job herself.

 

[Risen Soleil Verdane]

Perhaps it was a blessing to be insensate to magic as Heller's necromancy approached its apex. But for Marris he need not feel any gust of arcane wind, any swirl of the ethereal, to know that this was a point in time balanced on a knife's edge. He just knew it. He just knew that what he did here would help his granddaughter, his little Soleil, and squeeze one last ounce of worth from his life.

"You don't have to tell me twice," he said to Heller as though he were a man in a waking dream, and then he did as Heller bid, placing the blade flat in his palm. He spoke beyond the Dreadlord next, saying, "Do what you gotta do, Soleil. Granddad's here for ya."

And now that point in time tipped in its balance toward certainty, and what followed was an art as rare as it was dreadful upon the face of Arethil.

To any chance witness it might seem that Marris's arms lifted as though invisible strings pulled them upward. His face became aglow with wonder in these final moments, and he watched the blade which his own hands now held with a joy and anticipation that would be impossible among the sound of mind. And with one swift motion, whether it was his own or guided from beyond, the knife sliced across his exposed neck and the blood flowed freely. Marris fell to his knees, and then over onto his side. And the blood trickled out of his wound and moved in a way unnatural to the world, flowing with intent over the ritual site and the sand piled there. It flowed like an army on the march, steady and with purpose, and in time Marris lost much of the color of his flesh—and he had perished far before his lips turned blue.

Then the fruition of Heller's efforts.

The last stroke of the brush on the canvas, and the satisfaction it must bring to the artist to call his piece complete.

There now lay the girl who should have been dead, but had been brought back to form and life. She lay naked in her small and gaunt frame, looking as though no more a discomforting thing had happened to her than someone having snatched away her blankets on a cold night.

The dread miracle was finished when finally she took her in first renewed breath.

And slowly came to open her eyes.

Kian Heller

 

[Kian Heller]

Heller had never met a soul detached and hungry demand a sacrifice like this in order to return.

In the instances he brought back someone from the dead, it was with his magic and ability. That he was powerful enough to wrench them back to their bodies and breathing air once more. That their hearts were strong again due to his own sheer willpower and might.

This... girl... was made of sand and refused both his blood and drops of her grandfather's.

What sort of power did she have to make such a bargain?

Heller's gaze went from the still body of Marris to the small body of a young woman seemingly become sculpted out of that sand. She looked so frail, as if a strong wind would turn her back into a heap of grain once more. He never realised how still he was until that first breath she took stole the air out from his own lungs as he exhaled with relief.

Before her eyes could open, Heller threw off his woolen coat. His shirt was something thicker than the normal attire he would wear, an abundance of wealth made in the Empire funding his new wardrobe now he had returned. The material was thick and evidently rich in it's make, artisan made and now being peeled off his own body to be offered to the girl. Heller's hand touched her shoulder, warm and subtly tying a link of his magic to her life now. This was how he will find her again should the need come. If anything were to happen to her or go wrong with this resurrection...

He will play god again and either grant her life or death.

"Miss Verdane." His voice was deep and low, but the cadence he opted for made him sound inviting. A lure. Coaxing the girl to move and to accept her return to the plane of the living. "Please. Take my shirt to cover yourself." Heller tried his best not to shiver at the cool air sapping away the warmth he built with his layers of clothing. "Can you stand?"

The quicker she was back to standing on her own two legs, the quicker he could hand her off to the Vigilite and be done with this deal. He also had to be honest with himself, that this not yet Dreadlord fascinated him enough that he wanted to ask her questions, to get to know her.

To understand how it came to be that the entire life of the last of her own kin was the bargain made to bring her back.

 

[Risen Soleil Verdane]

For Soleil, that which began and endured in so grand a fashion, this ritual breaching the primordial veil between life and death, concluded in a manner most mundane.

With a simple breath.

Therein lay the continuity, the bridge between when last she lived on Arethil and now, and this bridge spanned over a darkness impenetrable. Death may have been cheated, but it retained as a toll what secrets lay on the other side, and to Soleil it was as though she had lost unconsciousness at the hands of Zinnia St. Kolbe and now was revived by the hand of Kian Heller, touching her shoulder as he did.

And when she opened her eyes it was to her no different than merely waking up, as she had many mornings prior.

Now Soleil cared little for covering herself—at least at present. Far more interested was she by the strange man, and her eyes glimmered as though she had been reunited with a long lost friend. She sat up and she smiled with an apparently simple and sunny joy and she said:

"Hi! Who you?"

Kian Heller

 

[Kian Heller]

A sweet creature. That is what he first thought of her as her eyes fell onto him and her peaceful demeanor changed as she moved to sit up. Small, frail, innocent. Wasn't she?

That something so young and...

Heller almost forgot she was an Initiate... or is?

She was meant to disarm, and Heller now furrowed his brows at her. He threw his jacket around her frame, clearing his throat at her bare appearance. "Dreadlord Kian Heller. I was tasked with assisting you back..." Did she come back wrong? No... impossible. Perhaps she had a speech impediment that did not allow her entire sentences to be constructed. Had he not read that in her file? "Do you remember anything before this moment now?"

This, admittedly, was new to him.

Rarely did he like to stick around to finish the transition from the between life to the living, so confident in his work and artistry that he need not wander the gallery in which his art was on display. He liked his anonymity, liked that he was such a secret for Vel Anir that his files were often redacted and classified. The Vigilite simply asked him to bring her back, and he had done so, but never had Heller witnessed such a sweet thing be demanding of such a sacrifice in order to return.

"Do you remember anyone with you... before?" Hesitant. Concerned. Heller sounded as if he had rescued her from a burning building going up in smoke and not a girl that was reborn in the ashes of sand.