Dreadlords Lets Talk

[Edric]

"You're right she probably wouldn't think much of me." Edric admitted to the ceiling, fingers threading through his hair. "Murderer and Traitor that I am, but..."

Edric slowly kicked his legs off the side of the cot, pulling himself up in a surprisingly fluid motion. His eyes entering a beam of light as he properly looked at Kristen for the first time since she'd arrived.

"Luckily, she's dead. Slaughtered by the same wise men who took me from her." A shrug rolled over his shoulders.

"I should probably take accountability for that one too, huh?" Edric asked Kristen. "I mean, If I wasn't such a monster she would probably still be alive."

Slowly he stood from his cot, walking the short distance between himself and Kristen. "Who the fuck do you think you are?"

He asked.

"Coming in here and telling me to take accountability." Edric spat on the floor. "You, with the gilded fucking childhood. You, with a loving mother, father, family. You, who can never understand what we went through."

Edric laughed, the sound bitter as he grasped the cell bars between the two of them. "You're so deluded, so fucking lost in your own little world of privilege that you can't even see it."

He shook his head. "I know what I am. I know what choices I made, and I accept everything that will happen to me because of it."

The Rogue looked Kristen up and down.

"But you?" He scoffed. "You don't even know what the fuck you're actually fighting to become."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

"I am the Dreadlord you will never be," Kristen replied with an air of pride, "even if you had never turned traitor and were not now facing the headsman's axe."

Nothing else Edric said was worth any manner of response, vile and profanity-laced as it was. Here was a man who cursed and scorned every blessing of those around him, begrudging them all of it, and using it as an excuse to effect absolution for his own villainous misdeeds.

"Regardless, I have come for two reasons. Firstly, to apologize."

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric scoffed, about to throw out another cutting jab when her words silenced him.

He blinked, head shaking as he found himself utterly bewildered. Apologize? In what world did would she ever say sorry to him? "Well, you're not very good at it."

The Rogue Dreadlord said, deciding to remain obstinate.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

"Allow me first to begin," she said. Though she could not know it, Kristen shared some measure of Edric's own bewilderment. Why on Arethil would she do this? Why should she do this? But this aversion came from base untempered emotion, a sort of primal righteous indignation fired up against the host of wrongful acts she knew Edric had committed.

Yet his wrongful acts did not excuse her own, nor those of the institution she was preparing to call out. And thus was this wrathful ire brought to heel and made subordinate to sound deference, yielding to what was just, not merely emotionally fulfilling.

"When we were outside the gates of Sene, in the wheat field, I spoke out of turn when I said that the Academy was the best thing that ever happened to you. I was wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. So fixated was I upon weakness, upon my own helplessness, that any means toward power I saw as only good. I admired you, Edric, you and all your strength. You once embodied everything that I wanted, you gave me hope that maybe I, too, a 'noble little princess,' could one day become a fraction of what you were...but I could not then comprehend the horrible price you had to pay."

She pursed her lips, holding back a little pang of sympathy. He would not want it, nor did she want to give it, and to show it would be nothing but awkward for them both.

"What they did to you was not right, Edric."

And again, quieter.

"It was not right."

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric blinked, entirely unsure how to respond.

He had expected Kristen to double down. Had thought she would claim that he'd squandered some great gift and that by betraying the Republic he had ruined his own life. He had expected a back handed apology for not doing more to save him.

This?

This seemed genuine.

So much so that Edric couldn't help but frown. His lips pushed to a thin line, and he stared at Kristen with no small amount of uncertainty. After what seemed like an eternity of silence, Edric finally responded. "Thank you."

He was not glib or cutting. He didn't throw out a jest or joke.

Only a simple and honest word of thanks.

"I'm sorry I almost beat you to death." He paused for a second, then added. "Twice."

His chains rattled against the bars of the cage. "My magic it can..."

Edric shook his head, cutting off the explanation and deciding it was pointless. Either Kristen would just hear an excuse, or he would be making one. Edric wasn't entirely sure which it would be. "The second reason?"

The Rogue asked, deciding that it was better not to suddenly pretend they were friends.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

I'm sorry I almost beat you to death.

To this Kristen nodded solemnly, knowing not if he truly felt this way, truly meant what he said, but choosing to grant Edric a charitable interpretation here. Whether Edric was sincere or not, though, did not detract from Kristen's own belief that, yes, she had required a firm hand to correct her in those moments of flailing, pitiful weakness. Perhaps one could argue not a hand quite so firm as to be brutal, but nevertheless it was needed, and she had not forgotten it.

"Secondly, to advise," she said. "These are the last days of your life, Edric. You say that you've yet to meet an executioner who can do the job, but this is a fragile truism at best—the Thread of Mortality ensures that you will die. There will be inflicted upon you a mortal blow, in whatever particular circumstances are necessary, that you cannot survive."

Kristen drew in a breath.

"You must now think of the closing of this life, and in what manner you wish to depart Arethil. You are presently a wound upon the world, whose sentence of death is just and beneficial to all, but you need not depart this way; great suffering have you caused to the innocent and to the deserving alike, and for your deeds against the former expiation may be found only in great suffering of your own. But it is all that mortal men can do to ordain your execution...though it is not all that you can do, in the interest of your heart and soul, to suffer it."

She studied him.

"Do you remember what you did, and what you told me, in the wheat field? After I had spoken out of turn?"

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric's face remained somewhat blank as he listened to Kristen's words, his lips quirking in a slight frown for a moment as she mentioned his 'soul'. Fingers tightened somewhat on the bars, but he did not interrupt her, did not make fun or offer another jest or jape.

He listened to every word.

"Kind of." Edric answered a few seconds after her question. "It's hazy."

Things always were when he became too angry, when he allowed his magic to flow and he simply acted on instinct. He could remember everything, he could even remember himself doing it all, but in many ways it seemed a dream. Distant and easy to forget. "I blubbered about what they used to do."

He said softly, his eyes going distance.

"The Proctors." Edric swallowed. Shaking his head as if pushing the memory away. Summing up the rest of the encounter much more quickly. "Then beat you, realized I fucked up; healed you, and took you into town."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

"Yes. You did all of those things. But you also did something else."

Something she remembered to this day. Something which was tragic in light of all that would come after it.

"You wept," she said, taking great care to say her words with all due solemnity. "You wept, and you lamented bitterly the things that you had done."



Edric

 

[Edric]

For a long time, long enough that Kristen might start to think she had insulted him, Edric stayed quiet.

His answer came slowly, his voice surprisingly soft. "I don't like killing."

Edric said softly, his fingers slipping down on the bars. His posture slackening, muscles releasing their tension as he seemed to relax for the first time...ever. head shaking as he leaned forward against the steel of his cage.

"But it's what I am." He said quietly, looking down at the ground. "Not just what they made me."

Edric admitted so quietly it was just barely a whisper. "You're right, I am a plague. My magic makes me that. Even if I never raise another hand, if I never pick up another blade. I'll always be followed by death."

He said softly, looking back up at Kristen as he shook his head.

In that moment he pictures the ghosts surrounding him in the manor. How he'd felt, trapped by all the echoes of the people whose life he had taken. Many by his hand, most not of his will.

"Every breath I take is stolen." A dark, bitter chuckle escaped his throat. Kristen was right, in a way, the Thread of Mortality would come for them all. Trouble was, it would come for him last. "It always would have been."

A memory flashed before his eyes, a face so beautiful and ethereal that he could recall it more clearly than that of his own mother. Edric swallowed, and then held Kristen's eyes. "They should execute me."

The smile that grew on his face was a twisted thing. Torn from it's ordinarily mirthful meaning and tainted with despair and dark amusement. As if he couldn't quite believe the joke that he was telling.

"But the trouble is...." He said, his fingers tightening on the bars. "I don't want to die."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen waited patiently for him to speak. She listened to all of it, for all that he said would make her coming point the more poignant. And it needed to be, if there was to be any hope for him—this she firmly believed.

"How many people, then, would you kill to live? Should the whole world perish in service to your cowardice?" This she did not mean as an insult, even if in all likelihood it might be perceived that way. She meant it as the truth—the truth Edric needed to hear. And so far as Kristen knew, she was the only one who ever spoke to him so, who ever did this for him.

She gave her head the slightest shake.

"Do you not see, Edric? Of what worth are your tears, when only so soon as you have shed them you return to doing that which you profess to loathe with your words but with your actions love so dearly?"

Edric

 

[Edric]

"You don't understand." Edric said with a slow shake of his head. "There aren't any tears."

He continued, slowly pulling his form back up from it's slackened state. "Not anymore."

That weight sat upon his shoulders, it always would. He could neither ignore it, nor could he carry on as he had before that, but he wouldn't give himself over to the executioners ax.

No.

"I don't like killing." He repeated the words. "But I'm going to do it, and I'm going to keep being the monster that I was supposed to be."

He turned away from Kristen, moving back towards his bed. "Until I get what I want."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen pinched her eyes shut and pursed her lips, a dismaying disappointment slowly descending upon her like a light and yet smothering veil in the wake of what Edric said in reply. Gods, she truly hoped that it would have meant something to him, his own tears, his own lamentations. Yet he seemed wholly gone, removed entirely from any possibility of redemption. And this was why he must be slain. He had no true regret, no true remorse, and he embraced evil time and time again—he simply could not stop himself. For the good of the Republic, the monster which so terrorized it had to be put down. If Dodwin or the relevant authority would but hand Kristen the headsman's axe, she would without hesitation perform the execution herself in this very moment.

"Edric..." she came to say, opening her eyes then and seeing him having retreated further back into the cell, "...you mustn't let delusion ruin you in your final days. It is over for you. There is no getting what you want. There is no recourse to be found in your magic, for it has already been taken into account. The Republic will rightly execute you, and there is nothing you nor Gilram's lot can do to stop it."

She let out a breath before making her final plea.

"If you wish for any manner of forgiveness, to atone in any capacity for what wrongful deeds you have done, then you are running out of time. This world slips quickly from your grasp, Edric, and your immortal soul is at stake."

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric watched Kristen carefully, his lips pressing thin as he listened to her words the last of which set in like a brick through glass.

As soon as she said them tension filled his muscles, and he suddenly found himself being glad sitting in the dark so that perhaps Kristen might not see his face. His head leaned back against the cold stone wall, eyes closing as he took in a deep breath.

He opened his mouth to speak, to tell Kristen that according to Chas he had no soul. That as far as he knew this life...this life was all that he had. That whatever any religion he'd ever heard of believed...there wouldn't be an anything else for Edric.

Then he stopped himself. "A lot of people think I'm dumb."

He smiled.

"And they're probably right." The words seemed entirely a non-sequitur, but Edric drew to his point. "But I don't think you and I are going to find a solution here, Kristen."

A small chuckle escaped his throat. "There's so much...so much you don't know about this."

He laughed. "And I'm just not going to tell you."

It seemed funny to him now, and despite himself he scooped himself up from the metal cot. Slowly he walked over towards the bars of his cell. Always was sure never to make a sudden move, to surprise or shock her as he reached the metal which kept them apart.

"Because I don't want to, because I don't like you, because...because I don't know what it will mean If I do tell you." He shook his head, then leaned forward. Both his hands extended through the bars, his chains grating against the bars. "But thank you."

He said with a soft smile as he offered her his hand. "You made me understand."

Edric stood there, waiting. "Thank you."

The Rogue Dreadlord repeated, then quietly added. "One day. I do kind of hope it's you who puts me down."

He grinned.

"I like the idea that the girl who chose-." Edric continued. "-ended up killing one of the best those fuckers took."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Quite simply, what Edric said, despite the shieldwall of Kristen's resolve erected for the purpose of this visit...frightened her. It happened somewhere after the dismay following his statement of the two of them being unable to find a solution, and somewhere before he outright thanked her the second time. Thanked her. Twice. For all her available faculties of intuition, she could not detect any sort of insincerity there, none of that flippant or facetious demeanor from earlier.

There was so much which lay hidden between the actual words he had spoken. And there within that unknown dwelled the source of Kristen's fright. It was as if Edric spoke of some portent, some prophecy, laying before her a foretelling of tribulation concealed in riddle, and she for all her grasping had no hope of figuring it out—until, of course, it was too late.

Her face betrayed everything. From tight and dignified sternness did her countenance slide into the long shadows of that aforementioned fright, brows rising, eyes opening, lips curling into a troubled frown. How was it that the two things he said last—of hoping she would be the one to kill him, of liking the metaphysical nature of it—were the least disquieting things of all?

But, ultimately there was nothing she could do. There was only, as it were, the hand before her.

She glanced down at it slowly. Then back up. Lumen's story readily came to mind, but...if there was any sincerity at all in what he said, in any of what he said for all her visit here, then this was the proving, wasn't it?

"I shall extend you this trust," she said softly.

And then she reached up with her right hand, her artificial porcelain hand, and reached towards Edric's own. Stopped just before she touched it. Thought for one second. Then retracted her porcelain hand.

With her left, her one flesh-and-blood hand, the one far more vulnerable than her porcelain limb, the one far more human than her porcelain limb, she reached out to grasp Edric's own.

Edric

 

[Edric]

For a brief second, there was a moment, a second where the scene played itself out.

Edric grabbing Kristen's hand and harm. Using it as leverage to drag her forward into the bars, wrapping the chain around her neck and with one swift wrench snapping her neck. Ending the darling Daughter of House Pirian, and finishing what he had started in those fields of wheat.

But there was no such scene.

As Kristen's fingers slipped into Edric's palm, she would only feel the folding of his hand around hers. A tight grip, but nothing more than the show of respect the volunteer deserved. "Good luck, Kristen."

Edric said with a smile, no sign of jest or barb in his expression.

"I have a feeling you're going to need it." The words, strangely, were not a taunt, just a word of warning.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

That very scene, or one so much like it as to be indistinguishable from the original, played through Kristen's mind and was indeed the thought predicating her trepidation, her reservation, against this extension of trust. Edric could have just as easily proved himself every bit the monster she and all Vel Anir claimed him to be as much as he could prove his sincerity.

But therein lay the danger inherit in faith, in trust, in the vulnerability that necessarily came with it. Yet without it, without faith or trust, nothing truly special between people could happen. Guarded people were island fortresses besieged by themselves, by their own woeful volition, with the spirit of their sole occupant wasting away in their loneliness.

It could have ended in disaster, this grasping of hands.

But it did not. And from it, something truly special; a planted seed of beneficent doubt against Kristen's more adamant thoughts that the man before her was completely, utterly irredeemable. What fruit it may come to bear, only Aionus knew.

For the present, Kristen withdrew her hand once their grasping was done. She had previously on her mind the notion to offer Edric any holy texts he might request, but...it now seemed an idea unworthy of pursuit. So she nodded in response to his wishing of good luck to her, thought only for a second of saying something like "Fare you well" in parting, yet this too seemed ill-suited to the moment and to what lay ahead of Edric.

Kristen turned. Got one step down the hall. Two steps. Three.

And then stopped. Standing, then, just barely within line of sight of the cell. She glanced sidelong back into it, looked to Edric, and said:

"One day, I shall return to Salesia. Will I find her there, alive and well?"

He knew who Kristen was talking about.

Yet Kristen departed before he could give his answer. In some respects, she did not want to hear Edric's answer now as much as see it on that fateful day to come, either in the face of that servant girl who worked in the Oren Manor or in her tombstone. Did she survive the massacre in the House of Oren? Kristen wanted more her eyes, not her ears, to be the final judge in the matter which had truly fractured the regard she and Edric had for one another.

In all that death which had so ended their mission in Salesia...was there yet life?

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric smiled.

 

[Chasmine]

Chasmine had been witness to the conversation, lingering in Edric's cell as she had promised to do. The cold space in the corner as the only evidence of her presence, she'd maintained her silence throughout.

Waiting, of course, until Kristen was well afar and away to say anything at all.

"I did not believe it possible," Chasmine's voice sounded behind Edric, "but I think Kristen has grown taller."

 

[Edric]

"Finally got used to Academy food." Edric reasoned after letting out a short laugh.

His head shaking as he returned to the metal cot. Laying himself down on the metal bed and humming a small tune.

His mood, decidedly improved.

 

[Chasmine]

She enjoyed his humming as much as she might enjoy a festival tune. Small things were rare among their ilk - simple enjoyments - and rather than question the why she simply let the contentment flow. After a time when it faded, Chasmine waxed thoughtful on the conversation she'd witnessed and all the many, poignant things spoken.

"For the record," the spirit said gently, "I do not think you are dumb, Edric."

 

[Edric]

The smile on Edric's face had not worn off when Chasmine spoke, and as she did, it only grew. "Thank you."

He said softly, closing his eyes and continuing to hum.

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

“Right, Initiate Vern can you just… stop doing that?” Everleigh had a hand on the girl’s shoulder, thinking very, very hard about her. If she stopped and Vern’s transparency continued she would end up forgetting and losing her again. Why she always seemed to get stuck with Initiate Vern was beyond her, and why she couldn’t tie a leash to her was even more beyond her.

“But he’s… a… a… a…!!!”

“A rebel. Yeah. Who cares? He’s in jail.” Everleigh thought about the only two missions she had been on with Edric, the Academy’s favorite initiate for so many years. “And a idiot.”

“Idiots are scary.” Another initiate said. Everleigh had five with her, all of them no older than thirteen. This was a fun little field trip Everleigh had devised after going on a two-week long survival hike with them, making sure that all the initiates understood the basics of survival out in the wilderness. There was no reason in sending them to opposite ends of Arethil if they couldn’t even make a fire or find their way out of the woods.

The door opened. The five initiates shuffled in, although to Edric it would only look like four and every now and then would Initiate Vern appear for a brief moment before disappearing from his sight again.

“Initiates, this is why,” Everleigh said, “you pay attention in your classes instead of just focusing on the martial training. When you don’t read and study hard you end up in jail, just like my old classmate Edric here. Edric, care to tell the kiddos how many books you’ve read in your life? Not many, right?” The grin would belong better on a devil than Everleigh with her face that would put even the prettiest fae to shame.

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric had been sleeping when he'd heard the commotion outside. His eyes popping open as he heard the first whiney Initiate saying something beyond the thick door. A frown touched his lips almost immediately as the door swung open, and in the bare light he was presented with a gaggle of five young students…and Everleigh Ebersol.

An eyebrow rose as the group approached him, and the little poison puff began to give her speech. The japes continuing until Everleigh needled him with her words about his book reading. "More and more, lately."

Edric said, not moving from his spot on the cot.

"Turns out when it's not shitty Proctors recommending them, they can be pretty good." A few days ago, before Kristen had come, Edric might have risen to the Poisoners bait, but a sense of calm had found him. A knowledge that….none of not really mattered. Not anymore. "But…ya know.."

Edric said, turning his snake like eyes towards Everleigh and the kids. "Maybe we should open this cell and test the efficacy of my training."

Big word for an idiot. Efficacy.

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

“Ooh, that your word of the day, big guy?” Her tongue was faster than a viper’s strike.

“I don’t want to fight him!” Initiate Vern wailed, disappearing completely and for a moment even Everleigh, with her hand on the initiate’s shoulder, almost forgot about Vern as well. Everleigh shook the initiate’s shoulder gently and Vern came back into focus. “—blood and my bones and I am not very good—“

“You’re not fighting him.” The initiates turned their eyes to Everleigh.

“Am I? Can’t Gilbert fight him instead, he’s the biggest.”

“I don’t want to fight him! Make it be Agustina she has the better magic.”

“What? No, for kressakes,” an exasperated sigh left her lips and she shook her head. “All of you shut up. No one is fighting him. I didn’t bring you here to murder you all.” Somehow the fear in their eyes only seemed to grow. “You know what, new lesson. You all need to learn not be afraid of fear. It’s exhilarating.” Everleigh said, looking straight into Edric’s eyes.

“Looking death in the eye.” Everleigh moved closer to the bars, standing straight but there was a laxness to her posture. “At least it’s exciting for me, maybe not for you.”

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric snorted, about to offer a returning jape when his coming words were drowned out by incessant whining.

Annoyance broke the blissful serenity and that he had been feeling since Kristen's visit, and as he stared at Everleigh his smile slowly drew to a thin line.

His eyes briefly, only briefly flickered to one of the Initiates. The moment he gazed at the girl, her eyes immediately cast down. The mousey little Initiate seeming to melt into the group of others and disappear.

Without warning, Edric dragged himself up from his sitting position. Never breaking eye contact with Everleigh as he swept his legs off the cot and sat up.

"Hey kids!" Edric said as he slowly stood from his cot. "You wanna know what's even more exciting than looking?"

For one brief, ever so brief moment, Edric looked towards where he knew Chasmine had been floating. To where he knew she would be floating now. His eyes flickered almost immediately after to the children. His hand shifting in the dark, something Chas would see, but not the others.

The signs simply said Scare.

He only hoped that she would do it.

Otherwise he'd just look more like an idiot.