Private Tales End This Way

[Elliot Aldmar]

You get used to dealing with things when they happen often enough.

"Some things, yes," Elliot said, and he left it at that. He was far removed from Dornoch, far removed from his past there, and there was no need at present to dredge it up beyond those three words.

Elliot matched Raea's steps down the stairwell, keeping a watchful eye on her posture and balance. One of his hands slid along the wall as they descended, the other he kept at his side—she was doing well by herself. Which, coincidentally, was another inversion of Elliot's typical experience with the wealthy. And a good inversion at that. The spoiling, softening effects of decadent civilization had not seeped into her entirely.

Once they made it to the bottom floor landing, Elliot continued his story, "I had my doubts. Reasonable doubts, given how outnumbered we were, and that all of the Grimhounds were dead. You were determined to stay and fight. I won't lie: I was prepared to leave you to your fate. Yet you said something which convinced me to take the chance."

Elliot pulled out a chair at one of the tables in the common area of the inn. Both of his hands rested on the spine and he did not sit—not yet. "You said to me: 'Even if I had a choice, I still wouldn't turn away.'"

He didn't speak it like a question, didn't ask the direct question afterward, yet still there was a curious air to his recounting of her words. Lightly inquisitive. If Raea replied with something kin to "Hm, is that what I said?" then Elliot would be content to simply confirm it with a few words and a nod and leave it at that, going then to fetch some a breakfast meal for the two of them.

But if she wanted to elaborate? Elliot had an ear set for it. Such was subject he always had a keen interest for: what set the framework of right action in someone's mind, and what inspired them to strive toward it.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

"What worth, a life lived in seclusion?"

The words had a haunted edge to them, as if she were circling round some unfathomable abyss, looking into the darkness and not liking what it was she saw there. She carefully took a chair and settled herself in it, feeling a surprising degree of exhaustion for the short burst of effort.

She mulled over her thoughts, slow and deliberate. When she finally did speak, she was clearly unsure of herself. "You know...what the world thinks of people like me," she said in a low whisper. "Spoiled, rich, and without a care in the world."

She looked up at Elliot, then away. "It is true, you know. True...but not the entire story." She shook her head carefully - very carefully, lest she perhaps dizzy herself. "What good is money, and power, and comfort? When faced by grim mortality, what good is any of it? All fade as memories do, beyond the span of our lives - however fleeting or long that might be."

The question seemed to be a question directed at herself. She looked down, closed her eyes and did what she had done for years now. Strengthened her resolve, and pushed past the unpleasant prospect looming on the horizon. Then she looked up, tired but determined. Some ghost of despair still haunted her eyes, but she had lived with that specter for a long time. It would never be truly banished, but...it could be borne.

"We all of us die," she said finally, and then shrugged tiredly. "I just wish that were I to die, I could trade the coin of my life for that of others, to give them an opportunity that I have been denied."

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

We all of us die. Spoken like an Elder of the Dreng'toth. There were plenty more crucial pieces to the picture which constructed the philosophy of life, death, and morality that they adhered to, but yes, that was one of them. We all of us die...but until then, there remained the question of life, and how to live it well, and how to endure one's tribulations worthily.

Elliot gave a small nod in solemn acknowledgement. He tapped the back of the chair with his hands and turned and went behind the counter in the common room, disappearing through the door to the kitchen area. Small talk on the other side between him and Fabiola. He came out with two plates—eggs and fresh brown bread and modest slices of ham on each—and set them down on the table.

Then he pulled out his chair and at last took his seat. Fabiola came by and set down two mugs of water and smiled genially and departed back to the kitchen.

Elliot entwined his hands on the table. And asked, "Why the change of heart?"

She had said so herself. Spoiled, rich, without a care in the world—true, all of that.

"What opportunity were you denied?"

There was a missing piece to the picture which constructed Raea, Elliot felt. Something she had not said. Most people her age weren't so concerned with the inevitability of death, and they operated under the tacit and comforting assumption that they were immortal until aging eased them into acceptance. Her aristocratic family had been restraining she'd said, but Elliot couldn't recall a noble taking up a rapier and a deathwish on account of having been denied some opportunity. So that couldn't be right.

He was aware that might be prying too deep. That she might not say, or that she might lie. He would, if somebody asked him about any number of sensitive subjects concerning his time in Dornoch and he didn't care for them to know.

Yet this kind of talk ceaselessly captured Elliot's interest, his keen attention.

Talk of change.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

As if to give answer, she broke into a fit of coughing, a wet and unhealthy sound. Mending, but never fully mended. Upright and walking, but never comfortable. That had been her life for six years, or maybe it was seven. Eight.

She did not even know.

"Life," she said in reply. She did not offer any further elaboration, though. She had some idea that what she was doing was foolish in the extreme, and that she might have done wrong in some unspoken way. Elliot had his entire life ahead of him, and well...she did not. She might have brought him to a place where he himself wound up dead alongside her, in the misapprehension that her life had any value beyond what she could buy with it. Others had decades to do something with themselves.

She had years. Maybe months, maybe days. And despite it all, she had grown rather fond of the grey-skinned fellow in their short time together. Perhaps it was just the simple novelty of a companion of any kind outside the carefully selected visitors she had received at home. Only days outside of the comfortable life of home, and already the threads of loneliness crept in.

She settled back in the chair, eyes closed. "And you? Why would you follow a walking corpse into a hopeless fight?" Curiosity in her words.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Life.

An unexpected and intriguing answer.

In truth, Elliot had been anticipating something material in nature. Not because of any cues Raea had presented herself, but because, overwhelmingly, that was what the world she had left behind coveted. Material, worldly, vain things, the like of which Raea had already mentioned: money, power, comfort, so on. There was a part of him steeped in cold logic which thought she, despite of all she might have said to the contrary thus far, would be no different.

Then he canted his head in that near imperceptible way one might when various pieces, thought separate, came together to form a flash of a picture, vague and ephemeral but grasped for a moment like the fleeting final image of a dream. A little light of recognition in his eyes.

Life. Her cough. A "walking corpse."

Life could mean just that, life, or it could mean "the sort of life I want to live." Her cough could be a harbinger of the inevitable, or it could be the last phlegmy remnants of the fever and cold's grasp. The remark of herself being a walking corpse could be leaning on a grim truth, or it could just be self-deprecating humor.

A suspicion was coalescing in Elliot's mind. One which carried a lot of weight. One which ought not be spoken lightly—especially if incorrect. And there were more suitable settings than a breakfast table at an Inn to ask such things.

So he took a bite of his bread. Swallowed. And answered her question, "I follow a lot of walking corpses into fights. Like the Grimhounds." He offered a wry smile along with his dry humor. "Comes with the trade."

He gave a shrug for show. "I'm just good at knowing which fights are worth the risk and which ones aren't."

And right before he took another bite, he added, "And a little luck doesn't hurt."

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

She nodded, not really believing that last bit. Luck was a thing she most assuredly did not believe in; the odds had ever not been in her favor, after all. All the same, she was glad to have skirted round the darker topic for the moment. Facing it on her own was bad enough; having to face Elliot and the potential anger at being led astray by a dying woman who hadn't the decency to be up front about it was another thing altogether else.

She let the drow go on that subject, happy to go another route.

"Father always said sell-swords were thick, easily bought and easily spent," she remarked. A cold sentiment, but one surprisingly common among the well-to-do, many of whom looked down upon the common man. Right or wrong, it was the way of the world. "It must be hard to work, knowing your life does not balance out very well against some nobleman's coin."

An entire company, dead in the streets. There was no need to elaborate further; she did not believe in luck, but he did. And, perhaps, he had a right to it. He was still alive, after all. He companions all supped in the halls of the dead, alongside their foemen who had died to his blade.

His and hers.

"Is it worth it?"

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Father always said sell-swords were thick, easily bought and easily spent.

To this Elliot gave a knowing nod. He wasn't wrong, Raea's father; he spoke of a generality and in so doing had spoken a truth. There were many reasons why men and women might choose to offer their sword-arm for hire, and some notable portion of them did so for reasons easily classified as "thick." And among the multitudes, all were easily bought and easily spent—what exceptions there were to this only proved the rule.

Is it worth it?

He finished one of his pieces of brown bread. Then said, "Yes." He sat back in his chair, lounging casually. "I'll continue with it so long as it suits me."

And Elliot spoke as if stating a fact no more significant than the color of the night sky. "It always will, I think. Violence is part of the natural world. It finds you, either undisguised or veiled in tacit threats, whether you're ready or not. I won't allow the imposition of another's will over mine—not again. Discourse only extends so far...so I keep myself sharp."

He picked up the wooden fork and started into his eggs.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

"I don't like it," she said after a moment. Finally noticing the food on the table, she picked up a piece of the bread, buttered and cold now. She didn't have much of an appetite - rarely did, for as long as she could remember - and picked at it with limited interest. "There should be a better way to solve the problems of the world. Not spill the blood of the innocent or the guilty, either."

It was a fanciful and idealistic idea, and she said as much. "Idealistic fantasy," she said round a bite. "At least the blade and the bow is honest. At least its not couched in legal contracts and slow, agonizing ends."

She held little illusion about the world of coin counters and merchants. They did not often use blade or bow, instead relying upon advocates and influence; the blood they drew was coin and reputation, and the bodies they left behind were all too often far more indiscriminate than those in the wake of a highwayman.

"But..." She finished the bread, and moved the eggs about the plate with even less interest. "But...I do not belong in this world." Which might explain why the world is so hell bent on removing me from it. She kept the inner monologue where it belonged. She reached for the blade that was not at her hip, fingers closing round air. She seemed pained at its absence. "Blood and fire, but I can barely even stand many days, and here I am. Playing pretend at the noble adventurer..."

She looked down, a touch ashamed at how transparent the play acting must seem. Well-bred bitch, in no way having lived a life like Elliot had endured and knowing full well the gulf between them, despite the comraderie that surviving in the face of life-or-death trials bred.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Slow, agonizing ends.

In that was described the long suffering of the sons of Dornoch and the daughters of Oban. They who rebelled against their bonds were slandered as brutes and barbarians, criminals and wretches. Murderers, even. It seemed to Elliot that slow, agonizing ends, a life spent under the miserable boot of an oppressor, did not spark nearly the same outcry as did the honesty of the blade and the bow. It went unnoticed. Accepted, in a tacit way.

These thoughts he kept to himself, but their character was plain to see in the hard slant of his brow, in the knowing glimmer of his eyes.

But...I do not belong in this world.

Elliot paused in taking another bite of his eggs, setting the fork back down.

"Then I'll say that was some impressive pretending, two weeks back."

He seemed to study Raea then. Looking to confirm some notion, perhaps.

"Is that the world you were referring to? One of adventure and bloodshed?"

And Elliot leaned forward some, his chair giving a small creak as he did. His hands, again entwined, rested on the table.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

She offered the mercenary a strained smile, but shook her head. "Yes. No." She paused, shook her head again. "I don't know. The world...is different from what I expected. Dirty, violent." Immoral. She had thought that the world of banking, of money lending, of trading and smuggling and all the other things wrapped round her little bubble had been dirty - and it was - but she was still taken aback by the brutality on open display in the world.

"I thought I would go out and be a hero," she admitted. "Go out into the world, and save the weak and the powerless from the wicked and the ruthless." She looked up, looking utterly exhausted, but a different kind of exhaustion. Spiritual, perhaps, or something very much like it.

"Well, I found wicked people doing wicked things. That is straightforward enough. But what of the honest man doing vile things because he has no other choice? The people that are not too weak, but simply too complacent to stand up to the bullies, so long as they themselves are not the ones being beaten down?"

And one last question. "And how, raising a blade, am I any different?" She leaned back, and closed her eyes. "I belong in a four-poster bed back home, safely ensconced in a world of books and finance, not crawling through the mud fighting and, eventually, dying to no useful end."

She pressed a hand to her eyes.

"...but I won't go back. I just need...need to work through this. There has to be a reason for it all..."

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Elliot ate some more of his eggs, his ham, letting her response settle before he put down the fork. He took a drink of his water. And then he sat back in his seat, his palms on the table.

"Sometimes it's clean. More often it's not."

There wasn't any sting of regret that Elliot felt for the things he had done, either in Dornoch or solo in the wild or amongst the companies. Just a recognition. The world was messy, and life itself was messy, but some parts and some things were messier than others. Friends became enemies and enemies became friends at the drop of a hat in his chosen profession. Fittingly, he thought of Alliria with the Free Company, of Alexia June, of taking part in killing her mother one day and saving her from her father's wrath the next. Yet in each moment he guided himself through committing to right action as he saw it. He had his views, he had his goals, he had his code to which he adhered.

Clean, dirty—his profession was merely a means to an end. The finishing of his business in Dornoch. There was a great debt that Dornoch owed, and Elliot wished to see it paid within his lifetime.

"A reason for your departure from home?" Elliot shook his head. "You won't find it here. Or anywhere out in the world."

He broke eye contact. Thought back on the hollow, untamed time of his life between his fleeing from Dornoch and encountering the Dreng'toth. A step in the right direction away from his previous circumstances, but ultimately missing (or, to be precise, avoiding) something.

Elliot looked back up. Relaxed his stance within the chair. "First you have to know what right action looks like. Right action for you. And only you can know it, because you are the highest moral authority in your own life. You decide."

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

"I know I won't find a reason for why I left here. I already have the reason for that: freedom."

She sighed tiredly, eyes still closed and food forgotten. "People think that money buys happiness. They think that it buys freedom, but it is just a different set of chains...if you let it be, at least." She had not. What was the point clutching coin and extravagence when you could read the length of your mortal coil and it was, case in point, very short.

"And I fear my moral authority to be idealistic and childish in the face of the world I found outside the estate walls." She opened her dark eyes, and regarded him sharply. "Why do you fight? What do you believe in? It cannot be so simple as 'not allowing another to impose their will upon you'? You do not seem so...shallow," she said.

She tried to lock his eyes with her own underscored orbs, searching for something in them. What it was, she couldn't say.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Idealistic and childish. If she thought it to be so, then it would be so. If she let others characterize her actions as such, if she internalized their judgments and gave them permission to mold her impressions of her own actions, then such would they be. And if said characterizations of what she believed to be right action stopped her from performing right action, then that would be the real tragedy: to be led astray from what you knew to be right by those who thought otherwise.

It was the path of his father.

Why do you fight? What do you believe in?

Elliot was quiet for a short while, returning her gaze. Like her, his food was forgotten in that moment. Thoughts coalesced. Discernments made: how much he would say, how much he would not. His eyes flicked down for a second, down to the table, his left fist covered by his right hand.

He looked up. "There is an untold amount of suffering in the world. An insurmountable peak, if you venture out to do good."

His eyes searched the ceiling for a brief pass, as if he could see the very peak mentioned and traced its impossibility with the track of his gaze. Then he met Raea's eyes once more.

"You cannot help everyone. Not even close. You have to accept that. So you have to choose your small stake on the mountain somewhere shy of the peak. And it's most fitting to place your stake where you owe a debt."

Elliot wet his lips. And his gaze dropped down.

"I've seen men wrongly treated..."

Elliot stood among the crowd with his mother. Her wrinkled hand held his, and he was glad for it. They were among the crowd of a public execution in Dornoch: three men, accused of crimes against the Dynasty and her people. One of them was a close friend of Elliot's, another drow just like him. He knew for a fact that his friend was innocent.

But it did not matter. It was his word against that of a woman witness. He was not favored, and that which he now stood accused of was heinous enough to warrant death.

Elliot's mother told him that it was okay to look away. He didn't.

And the floor dropped out and Elliot watched as his friend dropped, as the rope didn't snap his neck immediately, as he dangled on the rope until his face became purple and his eyes bulged and his kicking, at last, ceased.​

"...and women wrongly treated..."

Elliot had only just crossed the Allirian Strait. He was greeted in the first town within the Kingdom of Dalriada by the burning of a "witch" in the square. A pile of tinder lay at the foot of the stake, a young woman tied up to it, tears glistening on her bruised and bloodied face. Townsfolk, men and women alike, were calling horrific epithets at her, pointing their fingers, accusing her of potentially bringing back "the floods" with her magic, admonishing her for having kept it secret and assuming malice.

Elliot, the sole non-human in the crowd, stood out. The young woman saw him and pleaded with him to persuade the crowd for clemency. Her voice was hoarse and ragged from screaming, words ill-formed from the terrified sorrow choking her throat.

The town elders came with their torches and touched them to the tinder.

The flames caught and rose and Elliot watched as the young woman howled in agony, head thrown back against the stake, face skyward for a divine intervention that never came, and it was like this that her dress caught fire and fell away and her nakedness left to open display the blackening of her flesh as the flames consumed her.​

"...and I could do nothing."

He let out a heavy sigh. Swallowed. Stayed silent for a while, but the air about him suggested that he was not quite finished.

"My mercenary work keeps me sharp, yes. But ultimately it is a means to an end."

Elliot, at last, met her eyes again.

"I owe a debt, Raea." To the sons of Dornoch. To the daughters of Oban. "One I intend to see paid."

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

She was silent for a long moment. A moment that stretched to seconds as she thought over his words, and what they meant. And by his words, she felt...humbled. Profoundly. She could feel the conviction in his words, and it was a conviction she herself lacked - or at least thought she lacked. Here was a man that had seen the world, seen the suffering in the world. Perhaps been a victim of the harsh reality of Arethil.

She had not. She had seen only snippets of the world, through the slats of a fence of her parents making. In the last several weeks she had experienced more of the world than she had in the whole of her life before it. It made her laudable ideals seem trivial in comparison; she sought to make the lives of others better in order to give some meaning to her life, to leave a mark that said 'I was here'. And he, in his way, sought to correct the wrongs he had witnessed. Wrongs she had not seen, not in her sheltered world.

Humbling, indeed.

"I do not...know what to say of that," she said, and shook her head slowly. "It makes what I am doing seem...well, hollow. There is no overarching purpose to what I do," she said, and spoke the lie smoothly enough that even she might have believed it.

A legacy. That was the purpose, aimless though it might be.

"There are no debts to be paid, certainly not by me and in the manner you speak of them," she added. "I have seen people wronged, but that debt cannot be redressed by the blade. That, and I just do not have enough time to balance the scales before..."

Silence.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Before.

And their conversation hung on the word, as if the two of them had their feet teetering precariously over the edge of a cliff, balanced just so that the slightest motion in either direction would produce two very different results.

In the gap of silence there was the muted chatter of the Peligrades from inside the kitchen area, some light clatter of a pot being set down on a counter or on the floor. Outside the rise and fall of an indiscernible conversation between two men and a woman as it came close to the inn's door and then passed by. A creak overhead as perhaps another inn patron woke from their slumber and planted their feet on the floor and stood on just the right board.

Elliot eyed Raea intently. Not with a piercing intensity, but with honed focus. She had his full attention.

"Before what?" he asked, gently pressing for the answer. As it was prior, she would say if she wanted to say and decline if she did not. Elliot had only just made that very calculation for himself.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

She looked distinctly uncomfortable at the questions, almost to the point of squirming in her chair. She looked as though she would rather be anywhere but here, facing that question from this man. The man who had followed her into a potentially hopeless fight without know that his companion might drop dead at any time. Didn't matter that she might have dropped dead from the fighting itself at any time, not to her mind at least.

The distant chatter did not make the moment seem any less long. She closed her eyes and put a hand to her forehead. "...before I die," she said, finally. The answer was without inflection, without emotion: a simple statement of face and no more.

She wondered if the admission would bring anger. She would almost rather that than pity; she did not want nor did she need anyone's sympathy and pity. They would give her nothing, and only serve to weaken her rather than make her stronger. The unending torrent of sympathy, of pity, of worry and sorrow - they were the real reasons she had left Alliria. Oh, sure, she meant everything else she had said - she desired to make her life mean something, to make some kind of mark and use the coin of her life in a manner that would benefit someone. Anyone.

But the suffocating pall that surrounded her home - surrounded her - had been too much.

She opened her eyes, and looked at Elliot. She looked tired and worn, and now all the little pieces that he had noticed would finally click into place. She only hoped that it did not change the dynamic of their relationship, although she was grimly afraid that it would.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

The picture was complete.

Elliot looked back at her, expression mostly unchanged save for a momentary flexing of his brow as the portrait that was Raea indeed came into full view. She looked young for a full-blooded human, no older than twenty-five if Elliot had to guess. Those words should have been foreign to her lips, but fairness was foreign to the true way of the world.

At last he gave her a solemn nod.

"Would you like to go somewhere else?" he said. His tone low. Respectful. Yet it was not for the gravity of her situation, no. It was for how she was dealing with it. He might be able to expound on that if she assented. "Speak on it? It's a nice day outside."

The Peligrades ran a nice enough inn, but a common room was a mismatched setting to that potential conversation.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

Tired. Resigned. And still she nodded slowly; no pity, no sympathy. That was well - she did not want it from anyone. "Plenty of places I would go," she said, and got to her feet with some difficulty. The majority of the meal laid out for her remained untouched, and forgotten besides. While she waited for her head to stop swimming from the sudden change of position - cursing the weakness born not of her illness, but of the ordeal with the company of deserters -she gathered her thoughts. "Outside is as good as any provided," she said with a forced smile, "that the rest of your 'friends' aren't out there today."

She felt self-conscious of her own weakness, now that the cat was out of the proverbial bag. Still, it wouldn't be the first time, and certainly not the last that she had to totter about in order to get from one place to another. She pushed the chair back to the table, carefully, and turned with equal care.

"Some sun would be good after all the rain, anyway."

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

"It would," Elliot concurred, standing as well. He walked beside Raea as they made for the door. And then he added with a slight smirk, "Maybe it's strange to hear a dark elf say that."

He opened the door and held it. Stepped out into the sun.

And outside it was pleasant indeed. Gone were the overcast skies and the misty fog, the biting cold and the sheets of rain. Only the most resilient of puddles still clung for purchase on the ground, and while the morning was a touch chilly the rising sun cast spears of warmth which caressed anyone not in shadow. Among the villagers, the grieving had been done and the graves dug and covered, and, as life went, they'd moved on. Hard, always hard, but always necessary.

Which brought Elliot's attention back around onto Raea. They stepped down from the porch of the inn and onto the main road through the village, all traces of the two-week old battle erased. He walked with her, strolling down the road at a leisurely pace.

Raea. Seemed her grieving was done too. And that was key, that was a teaching of the Dreng'toth. Emotions arose, and this hard fact of arising could not be helped. It was how one dealt with said emotions that mattered.

"I assume you've exhausted every outlet you could," Elliot said. "Healers and apothecaries and the like. Especially with the means available to you."

Or once available to her, perhaps.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

The sun felt wonderful. It always did, during the right time of year; when summer came on, it would be overwhelming, the sticky heat making every moment uncomfortable. Well, almost every moment. She moved slowly and carefully, always aware that every step might deposit her on the ground. It was always so after a particularly nasty round of her illness. Whatever it was.

"The healers' magic will not touch me as it does others," she remarked of his question. "Resistant to their magics, and the malady itself seems not to care. If anything, their ministrations make it worse. For a time, anyway."

The graves tugged at her heart, but not for her own impending death. She was not...as quiescent about her fate as she liked to put forward, but she was also no fool. At least, she did not think herself such. "Potions help ease the pains and other problems, but nothing stops this damned sickness." There was a touch of anger in her voice, of the kind born out of vexation. "None know what it is. None know how to handle it. None can cure it."

And so she suffered from it. Suffered from it from the moment she came of age and the red moon began its cycle - and even that was uncertain in these late days. "It wouldn't be so bad if it did not wax and wane with the moon. If it would just ..." She shook her head. "Foolish talk. I will not simply...let go. But someday, maybe soon, maybe months down the line..."

Silence other than the crunch of her feet on the gravelly dirt.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Elliot listened, and listened close, for this was a matter of no small importance. Certainly among the Dreng'toth, it was in fact the matter which stood out as having the most importance in life. This was the one thing that all who lived and breathed must prepare for, and those who did not would, in their last precious moments upon Arethil, be caught in the grip of unsatisfactoriness. And what greater pain was there, what worse capstone, than to die in the throe of regret?

Down the road they walked, the one main road through the small village, whereupon many other lives had been cut short on rainy, misty, muddy day—if all for a different reason.

"Of course," Elliot said. His eyes were forward, his own thoughts on the matter behind them, the hours and hours of discussion among the Elders and Initiates of the Dreng'toth being distilled down to points and commentary of a more succinct nature. "It is commendable that you have not simply let go. Despair is not becoming of anyone. Life demands that you continue on, to keep searching for a remedy even if none seems to exist, but..."

He stopped briefly and glanced over, as if to put a finer point on his next statement.

"...when the time comes, you must be prepared to accept it. Illness or no illness, it was always going to."

The Thread of Mortality stole away even those who lived for millennia. A saying, particularly among the few elven members, of the Dreng'toth: Death was nothing if not patient.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

"Maybe," she said slowly and not entirely convinced. "I...have come to the conclusion that it is selfish of me to have done as I have done," she said. She thought of her parents, of whom their protectiveness was simply a product born out of their love for her. She had left, for better or for worse, to chase after her own selfish dreams.

"I will face my end on my feet," I hope, she added in her head. "I just hope...that I can make it mean something. If I am going to die choking on my own blood, best be an end I earned rather than acquired lying on my back." And best be it done in a way that allowed others to continue on. Hence the life of an adventurer, of one wedded to the blade.

Said that way, it sounded foolish. But, then, much of her life had been foolish up to now. Why change what had been working to date?

She looked to the grey-skinned warrior with interest. Just who was this man? What was he? She could not help but feel that a warrior like him should not have been so...philosophical...about life. There was a depth to him that she felt she was barely scratching the surface of, a depth that made her feel shallow and inadequate by comparison.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

"Mean something to others? Or mean something to you?" Elliot asked. "One of these you cannot control. The other you can."

The day was gorgeous, the sunny morning a far cry from the downpour during which the mercenaries had been killed by the deserters. Some might even say that so nice was the day that it hardly seemed fitting to be speaking on so grim a subject. And to any with this notion Elliot would have said of them that they were misguided. Was there a better time, in their minds? Perhaps during that dark and soggy rainstorm, in the gloom of the mists and fog, the sun lacking? How would it be any better, or any time for that matter, when death itself could come for you whenever it so pleased? It seemed to Elliot that no one setting was better than other, and that it was in fact fitting to speak on the topic no matter how pleasant or unpleasant one's surroundings.

After all, it wasn't like the beautiful day, by the sheer grace of its beauty, bought Raea a reprieve of twenty-fours worth from the slow advancement of her illness.

He started to walk again down the village's main road. Slow and leisurely.

"If it comes for you while you are on your feet, so be it. If it comes for you while you are lying on your back, so be it. What matters is how you face it."

A smile, small in size but great in its love, crossed his expression.

"The strongest woman I have ever known died in a bed."

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

"I do not know," she said honestly of the first question. Truth be told, she was doing a rather poor job of being something or someone meaningful to others. Add that she was not entirely certain of the real motive behind putting her neck on the line for others...

The subject material was definitely grim, but the adventurer had lived with the truth of it for years already. The uncertainty, the sorrowful end lurking round the corner of an unknown and unknowable future - things of the every day, for her. Once, she had been deeply troubled, resentful, and angry. Now? Now it was accepted as the way of things.

"I will not stop living just because..." she began, and then trailed off. If there was a bit of defiance in her voice, then so be it. Tired as she was, being outside in the glorious sun was enlivening, and the simple fact that she was still alive was glorious in and of itself. That vitality and will to live had seen her this far, and the defiance of it that rode below the surface was as much a part of the woman as anything else.

"I will not stop living." She shook her head. "It...is the real reason I left home. You don't know how it is, when everyone is already in mourning, when everyone treats you...different...because of that impending day. It was..suffocating." She stopped walking beneath a tree, so that the light of the sun still fell on her pale flesh but the fresh, green scent of the branches and leaves above filled the air.

She paused. "Who was she?" She could tell by the tone the import of the deceased. What would someone who could gain the respect of this man be like? Just met, she already sensed depths to him that were beyond fathomless.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Shade darkened Elliot's face beneath the shadow of the tree, yet bright was his tone when he spoke.

"My mother, Athena."

He hooked his thumbs into his belt and leaned against the tree. His right foot he raised up some, the sole of it flat against the trunk, and upward in blissful reminiscence did he turn his head and his gaze.

"She was a professional thief. Incredibly successful, even as one who strictly worked alone. She had a code, an unbreakable resolve for how she should be in the world, and she adhered to it. Her discipline was something that I could only begin to emulate after she had perished, so powerful was it and so inadequate in my youth was I."

If Athena had resolved to see Dornoch freed from its chains, to see Oban freed as well...she would have seen it done. Even in the shortness of her human years she would have seen it done, and no force on Arethil or elsewhere could have stopped her.

"I only hope for what I have resolved, the payment of my debt, that I have the strength to do it. That I might make her proud for seeing it through."

"I'm proud of you. What you've done today," she whispered. And it was the second best thing she had ever said to him.

Followed then by the first.

"I love you, Elliot."​

He looked to Raea. Smiling. "Hold to your resolve. Do not stop living, Raea."

Raea Stormcrow