Fable - Ask Shattered Promises

[Syele Wilhart]

Syele had anticipated trouble; that much was certain. No matter how much Jast claimed to the contrary that it would only be a ruckus, as he had put it, her heart was hardly soothed. People were, at best, predictably unpredictable. Put them in large numbers, feeling owed or aggrieved, and you were asking for trouble. All it would take was one person to throw a rock or one inept city guard to throw a punch, and then...

...chaos.

They had also helped craft that powder keg, but not only that, they had marinated it in ale.

The sudden emergence of Jast into her morning was more than enough confirmation that she had been correct in her concerns of a riot. However, the sense of urgency took precedence over any irritation, the call of duty well drilled into the instincts of the former Anirian Guard as her boots hit the floor.

"Have you got everything we need?" Wilhart asked, the tone of her question laced with the ghost of her former service.

She barely waited for him to answer, assuming that Jast would, at the very least, be prepared for the eventuality they had created. Instead, Syele was already heading for the exit, the stomp of hardened leather punctuating how empty the inn was.

 

[Jast]

”I got it!” He assured Syele as he quickly rushed after her. Slinging a pack onto his back that was laden with the supplies he had set out the night before.

Rope, grappling hook, masks, a few smoke bombs, and some other gear that might come in handy. Jast wasn't exactly a professional thief, but he'd worked in the Guard long enough to pick up a few adjacent skills. Enough to know what they'd need once they got to the College.

Quickly the two of them rushed across town, making their way through busy streets until bursting out onto the thoroughfare directly in front of the school. There they found a mass of people, already some thousand strong. It was a huge crowd, and one that was growing larger by the minute. More people pouring out of adjacent streets, alleyways, and even some of the nearby buildings.

Just ahead of the crowd, at the College Gates, one could make out four nervous guards. They stood with truncheons, and behind them two figures in robes waving their hands in what was clearly an argument.

As of yet, no one was addressing the crowd, but before long it would undoubtedly be demanded.

”Well, the eyes certainly aren't going to be on us.” Jast said, trying his best to look on the bright side of the circumstances. The crowd already being three times larger than he'd ever guessed it would become. ”Come on, let's skirt along the wall towards the back.”

No doubt there would be wards upon the bricks, but he had brought something for that.

They were here in Elbion to help themselves to some…additional assistance against magic, but they weren't completely helpless on their own. With a nudge he motioned for Syele to follow as he slipped into the crown and began to push back towards the other end of the College walls.

 

[Syele Wilhart]

Her concerns only swelled as they made their way across the city, the volume of people steadily increasing from a trickle of those heading to the college to the masses pouring out of their homes. Syele imagined that many of these people weren't even aware of why there was a gathering, only that there was one and that they did not wish to miss out.

By the time they reached the gates, it was clear that they had created a small army, the throng of civilian bodies before them cheering and jeering for their prospective promises. Before Wilhart could even comprehend it, Jast was on the move, the words of his plan disappearing into the crowd along with him.

Syele froze, if only briefly, as she stared into the crush of bodies.

"Not now," she muttered under her breath, her right fist curling and unfurling in conscious regimen as she finally followed Jast, or at least tried to.

Amongst the sheer number of people, he swiftly vanished into the crowd, leaving her to attempt to weave her way through the masses gently. It wasn't long before it started to feel suffocating, an invisible pressure growing on the former guard's chest as a soft sheen of sweat crested upon her brow. Her jaw set, and the harder it became to breathe, the more she pushed her way through instead of weaving.

Delving deeper, she looked, her head darting to catch a glimpse of Jast, but only found familiar accusatory eyes staring at her. They lurked at the corner of her peripheral and were caught in swift blinks that attempted to banish them. I can't breathe. There was no threat here; it was only a crowd, but all the same, it still constricted the woman's lungs and stripped any sense of safety away. She had to move forward, she had to find Jast, she had to get out.

"Hey, are you okay, ma'am?"

Wilhart looked to the voice of concern while still moving, unaware of the strain writ large across her disfigured countenance that now held beads of dripping sweat.

"...m'fine," Syele managed to mumble back, unsure of the words that had actually left her lips as her mind whispered suffocating notions into her ear. Did she say she was fine? Or was it that she couldn't breathe? The woman found an anchor in her thumb; the digit squeezed in a vice grip of a clammy palm, the discomfort a reminder of what was real and what was nought but ill-fated memory.

She never stopped moving forward, and eventually, after what felt like an eternity, she made it to the other side, gasping at the base of the walls.

It was almost funny that they, of all things, offered a reprieve.

 

[Jast]

It wasn't the crowds that did him in. It wasn't the press of bodies or the feel of the crush. No. Jast’s demons were at home.

But he knew the look Syele held in her eyes as she stepped out of the crowd. The way that her gaze cast down and side to side. How she moved, her muscles tense and never relaxing even as her foot fell down onto the cobbles below. The desperate breath that sucked into her lungs as she broke from the crowd. One sign would have been enough for him, but try as she might the Guards women tumbled into more than half a dozen.

Jast understood what was happening, because for them it was nothing new.

Not for the Guard.

As Syele crashed against the wall she would feel Jast's fingers suddenly close around her shoulder. The press of his hand not painful, but present. Impossible to ignore as he seized and shifted her ever so slightly so that she would hear his whispers. ”Deep breaths, Soldier.”

Jast said, the tone in his voice carrying all the authority of command. The confidence of a speech he'd spoken a hundred times before.

”Focus.” There was no curing this. There was no doing away with it. Jast knew. He'd seen it, in others, in the mirror. The curse that had been burned into their minds and stripped away the very faculties of their lives. ”Focus.”

He repeated. ”There's a job to do.”

None of them could be healed. None of them would be better, but at least they could ensure the same would not happen to more. His fingers squeezed Syele's shoulder a little bit harder.

”And no one else to do it.” He encouraged, dragging Syele back to the moment. ”Show those fucks the Guard doesn't break. We don't break.”

He said, as if telling himself the same as he did her.

 

[Syele Wilhart]

A hand from the blue made itself known upon her shoulder.

At first, Syele wasn't quite sure if it was real or imagined, her frantic stare looking up to see the face of a ghost that couldn't pass. It was only for a moment, a flicker, before Jast's voice cut through the haze of well-worn trauma that fit like a second skin.

His grip and voice were anchor points to help her find solid ground that the sudden chaos had obscured. They were real, tangible and something to focus on as a shaken nod responded to his words.

She hadn't anticipated the crowds, the mass of bodies packed into the square like a familiar crush. It had been so long since Wilhart had been to any major city that it hadn't even occurred to her that this could happen. It had blindsided her entirely, and were it not for the sense of panic that burdened her, then she might have felt shame.

"...I... I'm here," the woman responded as the man opposite her tightened his grip, a reassurance of self more than anything else. "No... We don't break... We can't break."

Her breathing began to settle. Syele found a steady rhythm in slow, deep inhales through her nose and exhales from her mouth as Jast's words gave purpose to their reality and the task at hand. In truth, she wasn't okay in any sense of the word but had long since faced the fact that she never would be. They'd never really be saved, but couldn't they help stop the cycle?

"I'm with you," Wilhart said, looking up at the former lieutenant with a furrowed brow still etched in discomfort and slick with sweat. "Lead the way."

 

[Jast]

”I'm with you.”

The words echoed in his ears, and the only question he could ask himself was…where was he leading her to?

For a brief moment Jast felt his stomach twist in knots. Fingers tightened into fists, drawing tight until his knuckles turned to white. His own breathing slowed, and for just a moment, a single second, he hesitated.

”Right.” The word came from his lips, but to him it hardly felt as though they slipped across his tongue. ”Let's go.”

The Lieutenant drew himself up, pulling his hand free of Syele as he reminded himself of why they were here. Why they were doing this. Why they had to do this. Both of them were broken, shattered pieces, and yet if they stopped now…there would only be more. If no one stood up and took a stance then more Guardsmen would end up like them. More fragments, more bodies, more graveyards.

They had to do this.

Jast drew himself up, and quickly pushed up against the wall. His pack slung forward, flap drawn back as he pulled out a grappling hook and a length of rope. The hook was a strange black metal, inscribed with odd runic marks. As Jast drew the rope back and tossed the hook over, a strange flicker of light drew over the wall. As if the metal had pierced some previously unseen field.

With surprisingly dexterous movements, Jast grasped the rope and quickly pulled himself up and over the wall. Crashing to the ground with a muted thud. ”Clear.”

He called to Syele, watching for any patrolling wizards.