Fable - Ask Sunrise, Parabellum

[Elias]

Cortosi Coast
Castle Sirl

"The only memory I have of this place is when the Proctors came to take me away."

That was partly a lie. Elias remembered that there used to be many servants here, but he couldn't remember any of their faces. It was a vague remembrance that held little sentimental value to the young man.

Here, they were far from the reaches of the Republic. The castle, after all, was but a husk of its former self staffed by a minimal number of guards and servants. Just to keep the place from falling apart completely. There remained the hope, at least to Elias' father and those with boundless loyalty to him, that House Sirl would soon regain its prestige.

But the Lordling didn't care for such things.

"I guess a lot of things were taken to Vel Anir," he said, "Furniture, belongings, and the likes."

But when he'd snooped around the family estate in the capital looking for a specific collection of tomes, he'd turned up empty-handed.

"What do you know about the Annals, Ventress?"

 

[Ventress]

Ventress...despised feeling this way. It was similar to the way she felt standing at Isbrand's grave and she loathed it so. The clutching tightness in her chest, the somber thrum of blood in her veins—at least this time she was in no danger of having her emotion overflow from her eyes. She was sworn to House Sirl. She should be feeling nothing save triumph and satisfaction over the lesser Houses.

Not this.

Yet here it was. Castle Sirl. A gutted corpse of its once radiant glory. Whatever survivors of the Rebellion there were deigned it not even important enough anymore to house anything more than second generation furniture and art from third rate artists. Anything that still held value had been moved elsewhere.

But it remained that some relics could well be forgotten, overlooked, and lay resting within those forlorn walls.

Ventress stood at Elias's side, regarding the castle before them as he asked his question, hands as always folded crisply into the small of her back.

"The Annals of House Sirl have been passed down generation to generation, father to son, for hundreds of years, my Lord Elias. Within are recorded genealogies, histories detailing the exploits of Sirls past, transactions and debts and favors owed. Presumably more than this, information meant only for the Lords of Sirl. It is an extraordinary tome."

A slight narrowing of her brow. An act of sorrowful frustration.

"And here it rots. Forgotten."

Elias

 

[Elias]

Standing in the yard, the keep's shadow cast over them, Elias couldn't help but feel powerless before the old monument. He forced a smirk, imagining his father's face as Ventress spoke.

"I've plateaued, Ventress," Elias began to cross the yard, "The other Initiates have begun to match me. Pull ahead. I need the Annals."

Within it he hoped to access the secrets writ by his predecessors.

"You'll help me find it."

 

[Ventress]

A singular twitch of her eye, her right eye to be specific, at the mention of the other Initiates. To Ventress there was no fault of Elias for, in his words, plateauing. Rather, the audacity of his peers to think that they could ever match the majesty of the Sirl bloodline magic was what vexed her greatly. If Ventress were appointed dictator of Vel Anir, such impudence would be punishable by death.

"It will be done, my Lord Elias."

She walked with him, speaking on what scarce details she knew of the chaos of the Rebellion. Having not witnessed any of it firsthand, all her information came from secondary sources—a good lot who were not even friends of Sirl.

"Many of those who possessed direct knowledge of the Annals perished in the stand at the Sirl Estate. For those who survived, blooded Sirls or sworn bannermen, it became an unimportant detail."

She regarded the walls of the castle with a small glimmer of pride.

"The plague of the Rebellion did not reach Castle Sirl. The traitors fought and won their battle within Vel Anir proper. The tome of the Annals may have been forgotten, but it has not been destroyed."

Elias

 

[Elias]

"Many of those who possessed direct knowledge of the Annals perished in the stand at the Sirl Estate. For those who survived, blooded Sirls or sworn bannermen, it became an unimportant detail."

"What a terrible, horrible, no-good, bad thing," Elias said pleasantly.

Well, it would have been if he'd cared. A lot of relatives of his died. Family friends. His Uncle Damian, supposedly. His father's older brother, whose loyalty to the Sirl name rivaled Ventress'.

But he didn't know them. Their deaths meant little to him but everything to the House, which they still called Great. Because. Of. Elias.

"Why don't you know more about it?" He asked her, "Isbrand did, I bet. Didn't you fill his vacancy?"

Elias came before an ornate door and curled his fingers around the door handle. The old hinges whined, and he stepped to the side as he pulled it open, fixing his gaze on the First.

"They didn't ever... show you it? Or tell you about it?"

 

[Ventress]

"They have not. And it would have been improper to ask."

Ventress said this not with any trace of disappointment, but instead with nothing short of a quiet pride. She even tilted her chin slightly as she had spoken. Her eyes were unworthy of gazing upon the Annals, and such as it should be, for she was not a Sirl in blood nor in name. All was right in this regard, in the keeping of this tradition.

Imbedded within that pride was also the confidence and surety that one day she would be worthy to gaze upon the contents of the Annals—this as a Sirl herself.

"What Isbrand did or did not know on this matter, I cannot say."

She stood off to the side of the open door, hands as ever folded behind her back, awaiting with infinite patience for Lord Elias to enter. Never would she presume to enter any premises before a lord or lady of Sirl, or to walk away whilst still being spoken to by the same.

Elias

 

[Elias]

If there was anything that phased Ventress, Elias had yet to find exactly what it was. He lingered for a moment longer, then clicked his tongue, entered before the First, and began to wander across the entry hall.

"You at least know your way around the castle, right?"

He sought his father's old study, which had likely been cleaned out at this point. And he would have found it eventually, after much floundering about the keep's hollow corpse.

"We'll start with father's study, then his bedchamber. Any other place that would make sense, too. If that fails, then we'll scour every inch of every room until I find the Annals." Elias could feel it through the castle walls—the sun, that is. Perched up in the heavens, shining down on saints and sinners alike. The feeling of its motion through the sky from sunup til sundown wasn't something he could ever get anyone to understand, even if he could find the words. "I don't care how long it takes us."

 

[Ventress]

"Familiarity with Castle Sirl has been acquired for a long time."

The entry hall flashed golden in a quick and furious series, like a relentless cluster of heat lightning tearing apart a summer sky. Eleven Projections of Ventress flanked the two of them now, and in the short order they all branched off in differing directions to increase the speed of the search elevenfold.

"The scouring can begin in tandem with the seeking inside of the study and the bedchamber, my Lord Elias." And, after a small pause and a slight glance toward him, she added, "I respect the value of your time, my Lord."

Elias

 

[Elias]

Elias felt foolish that he hadn't considered the projections could also be used in such a manner. As his abilities granted limited utility outside combat, Elias had a habit of analyzing others' abilities to the same degree. Rarely did he think of how a Dreadlord's magic could be of considerable use aside from sundering one's enemies.

"Lead the way, Ventress."

With the First walking point, they arrived at the bedchamber and attached study in no time. As Eli expected, the bedroom was sparsely furnished, as his father took anything of worth to the Sirl estate in the city. But, before he began his search in earnest, the young man wandered about the room, trying to recall any memories of being there. None came.

Elias stopped before an old dresser with a mirror and dragged his finger across the dust that had built up on it since its last cleaning from lord knows how long ago. He stopped at the base of a small jewelry box and, after a brief pause, opened it. It was neatly organized and seemingly hadn't been picked apart as it appeared to be mostly full.

He then noticed that everything left in the room wasn't something a man would've owned. And at this, Eli's hand tightened into a fist at his side.

"Did you ever know my mother, Ventress? I've always heard she was a kind woman."

 

[Ventress]

Much had been taken. Much had been left. Ventress was not one for poetic thoughts, but it struck her as an echo of the Rebellion, in a way. It was not so long ago that anyone would dare cross House Sirl, and if in their foolishness they decided to try, their misapprehensions about their chances of success were swiftly rectified. Now? The Republic granted unearned authority to whatever pissant could persuade the drooling masses of commonbloods to "vote" for them. It sickened her.

Dutifully she searched the study until Lord Elias asked her a question and she stood and paused.

Then said, with the sterile tone of delivering a dispassionate report, "You are laboring under a false impression likely fostered by Sirl's enemies, my Lord Elias. Lorenna was not kind, nor was she especially cruel. I would describe her as detached from others with the exception of Doran. She was chiefly concerned with her own affairs. She perished to illness shortly after Elspeth was sent to receive her education."

Ventress regarded him. Assessed.

"Lorenna confided in me the day after you were taken to the Academy. Would you have me tell you what she said, my Lord?"

Elias

 

[Elias]

Elias rolled the dust he'd collected on the tip of his finger with his thumb, then wiped them off on his trousers. As Ventress talked, he closed the jewelry box.

"That's... not..." How he remembered her at all. No, what he remembered of her was that she was gentle. And smiling. When he left, he remembered seeing her smile. That memory had been a comfort in dark times when he'd been alone and hurting at the Academy.

"What'd she say?" His tone lacking conviction, Elias looked at Ventress through the dresser's mirror with a furrowed brow.

 

[Ventress]

Any distress from Elias Ventress simply did not notice. Not yet, at least. Her mind was not so attuned to the potentially destabilizing content of what she had said, and what she was about to say.

If anything, she seemed pleased that Elias had inquired further of her report.

"Lorenna said to me: 'I have never felt so relieved in my life.'" Ventress shrugged, as if the words were an impenetrable and insignificant mystery. "I will state that it was unusual for Lorenna to speak to me directly. Doing so in such a manner added another layer of abnormality. Her words also did not correlate well to the circumstance. Why she felt relief that you were taken remains perplexing. Isbrand advised that I disregard the matter, and it was sound advice."

Ventress continued her search. Quite content.

Elias

 

[Elias]

Many years ago, Elias owned a pair of trousers. They weren't especially nice, and they'd become well-worn from day-to-day use. There came a point that the threading along the waistline had become irreparably frayed. He wore it until the last thread snapped.

"What?" Elias scoffed, his heart seizing up in his chest, his steadfast gaze flicking between Ventress' lithe frame in the mirror and his own increasingly consternated expression. A quiet, incredulous huff passed his lips, "No, no. That's, heh, that's ridiculous."

The young man's large frame hunched over the dresser, his hands flat on either side of the jewelry box.

"She loved me," and he repeated this quietly to himself in several quick utterances, "She did. She loved me."

 

[Ventress]

Ventress stopped. Paused with a gloved hand on the door of a standing wardrobe. Something seemed off about Lord Elias, but Ventress couldn't pinpoint what it could be. She had never known family of any kind. It was a sterile fact to her that she herself had a mother and father, perhaps alive or perhaps dead, somewhere out there on account of her, of course, being alive. But such knowledge held no practical purpose for her. Her own parents could be proven and arraigned before her, and she would feel nothing but indifference. Apathy.

The closest parallel Ventress had to Elias's connection with Lorenna was to Isbrand. Yet this was a connection she did not make, because the circumstances were different. And so to her, she could not fathom why Lorenna held any level of special significance to Elias. All she was was the person who birthed him. Nothing more.

Ventress turned around. Looked across the bedchamber to where Elias was hunched over the dresser with the mirror.

The false impression was proving to be a nuisance. Misinformation was powerful. But it was imperative that Elias be relieved of it, so she would be patient in the matter. Such was her duty.

"That notion seems to be incorrect, my Lord."

Elias

 

[Elias]

Elias' powerful, hunched figure across the room trembled with... a great many emotions. His shoulders shook as his hands pressed tightly down on the dresser. How angry he felt, raging denial against what his heart spoke to him. The urge to whirl on Ventress and claim her a liar was strong, and how easy that would have been for him to do. There were many things he didn't know about the woman, but one he did was that she would never dare utter a falsehood to him.

Her terse honesty was sobering but made facing the truth no less upsetting. The urge to shed tears welled up within Elias, and though he may have tried to let that weakness and vulnerability rear its ugly head in front of the First, they never came.

Perhaps he'd always been aware that the image of a caring mother had been a weapon to survive the brutality within the Academy's walls, but it was an awareness that remained submerged within his subconscious.

"RRRRAAAAAAAAAGGGHHHHH!" Elias bellowed and swiped his hand across the dresser, striking the jewelry box to send it flying across the room. It crashed against the wall with tremendous force, and the top broke open, its expensive contents spilling out onto the floor as the box clattered on the ground.

He then struck the mirror, shattering it, then slammed his fist down on the dresser, cracking a splintered hole through it into the top drawer's compartment. Elias ripped his hand away from it and, with all of his might, hoisted the dresser aloft and threw it into the empty space where the bed had once been as if it were a sack of feathers.

The Initiate stood, veins bulging in his arms, his chest heaving with indignation, with wild strands of hair falling over his brow. What was it they had come for? Blinded by rage, Elias forgot completely.

 

[Ventress]

Ventress's gloved hands slowly and precisely sliced upward to come to rest in the small of her back, and she observed Elias's distraught rage, bearing the sight with deference and patience. Yet her reaction was not completely stolid. She may have watched the violent outburst with an outward composure, but inwardly she was disquieted.

Inwardly, she thought of her own return to Vel Anir after the Rebellion, standing outside of those once mighty gates, livid fire igniting her veins as lesser Dreadlords and Guardsmen—Guardsmen—dared to issue her their ultimatum. Each time she called out to them, Where is Isbrand, Where is Isbrand, how she had wanted to destroy something—a jewelry box, a mirror, a dresser, anything within reach of her magic—for each refusal from her interlocutors to answer.

Was it because the cretins did not answer? Or was it...Isbrand? The way her regard for him elevated concern for his well-being?

She didn't have answers for that. Not ones that stood in the light of consciousness—elsewhere, she knew. They awaited, these answers, like curios long forgotten in a dim basement.

At present, however, Ventress had but one conclusion.

"My Lord Elias," she began slowly, tone devoid of judgment and with the respect of old of a loyal servant to her lord, "this false impression perpetuated by House Sirl's foes has done significant damage. They have sought, and seek still, to destabilize you."

And after a minor pause.

"Would you like to have the room?"

There were times when being alone was preferred.

Elias