Private Tales The Last Resort

[Draedamyr]

Draedamyr ate light ahead of the road. Just some breads and jams before they road out. One of these days they were going to get to Alliria and his actual house. He actually liked cooking himself from time to time. He missed his kitchen a little.

"Do you think that she'll want to be found?" he asked as he stepped outside.

He looked distracted, still mentally tallying if they had left anything behind.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She was staring into the wildlands when he came out. The two of them were definitely different people in their desires, but of course that did not make much difference in the case of mutual affection. He liked the cities, because that was where he was most comfortable.

She? She liked the wild lands, to be away from the reminders of all the failures of the past. Still...companionship could blunt the worst pangs of shame over things long done.

His question was expected. And sh rather thought she knew the answer. "I would assume so," she said. "Another world just brushed this one, and so I imagine whatever torpid slumber she has been in, or whatever ends she was pursuing before now will have been abandoned in pursuit of this."

Because, quite simply, if a world could brush Arethil as Pandemonium had, then there had to be a way to escape this world. Even going to Pandemonium itself might prove a new route away, back to the multiverse that had long been denied her and her kindred. The Sidhe of this world knew nothing of other realms, but the Old Ones, such as herself, did. "Although I rather imagine it would be foolish to try." She could remember the Ascended and their crooning siren call. They desired her, the power she could wield, as a wanderer in the desert would an oasis. She had no intention of offering herself up on a silver platter.

"Well, shall we?" She offered a hand to Draedamyr, that they might walk together a while before they left civilized lands. Even as she did, she heard a call to wait, and looked up.

Red was coming down the path, almost as if he knew that they were leaving this morning. He carried a sack over his shoulder, presumably of rations of some kind. "Hold up," he said drawing close. "Sorry I haven't been around, but..." He trailed off, running a hand through his hair. "I had to...go somewhere else for a bit. Come to terms, if you can understand."

Seska certainly could.

 

[Draedamyr]

Draedamyr still remembered her pony. The magic that Seska had woven through its being twisted. At times they had warped her magic itself. What they hadn't liked was steel. Perhaps it was the immutable to their kind. Whilst dwarves and men and elves forged steel to their needs, magic was the same to them.

"I hope the demons have not been drawn to her already. There was word that the mists had faded and the last of the demons gone. Another rumour was that there was a new portal stone in the centre of the storm."

Draedamyr did not pay more credence to rumours from people in crossroad taverns. He imagined there was plenty of truth, wrapped up in many falsehoods.

"I had to...go somewhere else for a bit. Come to terms, if you can understand."

"Of course," Draedamyr replied. "Do you still want to come with us? There is no pressure if you wish to stay."

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

Seska scoffed at the idea of Lia falling to the demons. "If she had fallen to the demons, we would already be in a lot of trouble," she pronounced. "It is difficult to say who among us ancient few is strongest, but the degree of separation is small enough. She remains untainted, for now."

She was fairly confident of it, and also hopeful of it as well.

Seska bowed her head to the blacksmith. "Totally understandable, given circumstances," she said. Respite wandered up, and she patted the stallion on his neck as he was being loaded for the journey. She looked to the woods they had just entered, and shook her head. "To think I could miss the wildlands so, and at the same time not."

For now, she could walk, and she looked up to her elfin companion with a smile on her face. "Shall we, my dear?" She gestured to the woodlands beyond the town. "Somewhere out there, I feel we shall meet her. It has been longer than I can remember since last I met another of my own kind..."

"We should probably move, then," Red offered. He carried a pack on his back, shouldered as easily as if it weighed nothing. "When last I saw her, she was far into the woodlands, away from human habitation..."

 

[Draedamyr]

"Deep in the wild lands? Hold on just a moment..."

Draedamyr vanished back into the tavern. He emerged within just a few moments, his bag looking slightly more bulky.

"Two bottles of red should make that a little more tolerable," he apologised. Draedamyr managed not to grin at Seska as he stepped past them both.

They made a good pace, setting out into the open fields and away from the roads. It was farmland at first, but soon they would be heading into woods. With a bit of space between them and Red he took a moment to ask a question.

"If you had to take a guess at how she will feel about seeing another of her kind..."

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She arched an eyebrow at the two bottles of wine, not saying what was on her mind. Namely, that two bottles would not be enough to last them an evening, let alone a sojourn into the wilderness.

A journey that started with a single step. She was content to walk, the stallion purchased a couple of villages ago following along placidly enough behind them, the bundle of thoughts and emotions - such as an equine had - tucked into a corner of her mind.

She wished that Draedamyr could enjoy the less populated parts of the world more. There was a simplistic beauty to the carefully tended fields, but an even greater to the wild profusion of life where the hands of man seldom laid fingers on so much as a twig. The simple beauty of mountains and forests, rivers and lakes, the spiderweb with dew on it in the early morning light.

All devoid of people. Maybe there was something wrong with her, or her great age and wealth of experience tended to push her from the civilized into the primal.

Red followed behind in silence, seeming wrapped in it and lost in his own world. He appeared not to be able to hear them, or to even acknowledge their presence. It suited her, for now.

"I couldn't begin to guess. But she is more likely to be friendly to another of her kind than she is to yours, for certain." To call the Sidhe of the older caste insular was an understatement. Whether a difference of culture or simply a difference of age, her and the other Ancients - few as they were on Arethil - could not even connect well with the children they had born here. "I do not know if she has pangs of loneliness or not, but I know that she - like myself - can feel. She might even wish to seek me, given the threat that has manifested itself. Again," she said. "How I could possibly forget these demons is beyond me, but after enough time...well."

 

[Draedamyr]

Draedamyr tilted his head to one side. "Best make sure that she meets you first then," he said with a soft chuckle.

The ward around his neck didn't need to be tested by an angry sidhe launching her power at him. Seska's memories were even more confusingly wound than his own. He was now intensely curious as to what they would find.

The air was particularly clear out here. No crimson clouds encroaching, none of the usual smells that came from towns. Even in country towns they had too many horses coming through.

"You know this is one of the only times I've deliberately set off towards nothing at all. Normally there's a warm house and hot food at the end of a trip."

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"It is liberating," she replied lightly. "Once upon a time, before I came here, I carried..." She paused, and wondered how to explain what it was she used to have, before the world prevented her from accessing it anymore. "Well, call it a key. Or a doorway, either works. I could be anywhere in the world at all, and still be at home of an evening."

A pocket dimension, crafted by pure sorcery and maintained by such. If it had not collapsed back into the void by now, it was certainly going to be a little dusty. All of the relics and keepsakes from an eternal life had been lost in that place when she came here, and could no longer access it. "I miss my little cottage, and all the memories that I kept stored there."

"Surely there is a way you could still get to it," the blacksmith chimed in. He had crept closer while they were discussing, his calm features quizzical now. "I...do not understand much of magic - if that is what you refer to - but if it was once open, why not now?"

She sighed. "Because I cannot open the gate to there anymore," she replied. "That magic does not work here. I've spent a thousand years trying to make it work, to no avail."

"But the portal stones...." the man said. "Don't those do something similar?"

How to explain to one who did not understand magic? She looked to Draedamyr, hoping he might be able to better explain than she could.

 

[Draedamyr]

"The portal stones are older than every race on Arethil, or at least they are older than every race that has spent thousands of years trying to replicate their magic," he said.

"The results of the attempts have been disastrous. Some even say entire empire have been wiped out by the cost of trying to open a portal like that. Whatever magic punched a hole in the world to connect them does not exist any more. So if there were ever Gods on this world they must have done that before they left."

Draedmyr was aware that many still clung to their religions and deities. He wasn't against the notion of gods, but he was adamant that if they had ever been here then they were long gone.

"Within my memory a wizard once managed to teleport himself a hundred feet. He did, however, appear the other side as flat as a pancake and quite dead."

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"And yet," the blacksmith said, head cocked to one side, "Outsiders like her still manage to make it into this world."

Seska sighed. He had met with Lia as well, so it was not surprising that he would bring this up. "Getting into a prison world like this is not that hard. Within the Prim, there are no rules. Connecting to this world from outside is not even remotely hard....but it is a one way trip." if her words were a little bitter, well, she had a right to that.

The blacksmith said nothing to that. Was it her imagination, or was there a glint of something in his eyes? Something indefinable that, irregardless of that, seemed smug?

Time enough for that later.

"Anyway, wizards of this world barely deserve the name," she scoffed.

 

[Draedamyr]

"No one is questio ing your ability," Draedamyr replied softly.

Then, strangely deciding that this was a good topic for idle conversation, he continued.

"If these demons came through a portal stone, then perhaps they do not come from as far away as we thought?"

It had been a harrowing time for him, but Draedamyr was speculating on the creatures that had led to Red's family being torn apart.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"As far as the thickness of a dream," Red said softly to himself. Seska cast a side-eyed glance at the blacksmith, a spark of curiosity in her eyes. She shrugged.

"Esoteric knowledge, that," she simply said.

"Once, my sister had me learn how to work magic into metal," the man said. "I know how to read, and there are all sorts of interesting things in books."

She nodded, turned to Draedamyr. "Distance is meaningless when talking about distances between worlds anyway." She laughed, a touch bitterly. "The thickness of a dream is right. And wrong. And neither. It...is complicated to explain, and even I only understood the application side of it, not the theory. In essence, all worlds are one atop the other. Finding another world isn't hard, finding a specific one is."

She gave the elf a nervous grin. "I probably just muddied the water more than anything, though."

 

[Draedamyr]

"I think the point I was making regardless of how much I understood," Draedamyr laughed, "Is that there are just two options."

"Either the demons came from somewhere else on this world or the portal stones actually connect us to...Somewhere else."

Draedamyr did not like the sound of either option. He was speaking in absolutes, he supposed. That the rumours said the mists were around unknown portal stones was a leap of logic away from his conclusions.

"If the portal stones had been lost, then perhaps it it simply the same place they came and devestated long ago," he said to correct himself.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"I say it is pretty obvious to me," she replied lightly. Red chuckled to himself, and shook his head. "By some definitions, I am a demon. I am not of this world, but apart from it." She paused, and a devilish light appeared in her eyes for just a moment. "Certainly a demon in some regards," she added in a voice like liquid smoke.

"Those creatures are not of this world," Red said into the moment after that comment, "I am sure of it as I am of an iron in the fire."

"I have always wondered about that," the sidhe said after a time. "How can something that defies the laws of magic possibly exist on this world? Even on Tonan, the Gods could not break the rules that governed that world...and yet here, you have stones that connect to one another across vast distances. And...to other realms." She paused, head cocked to one side. "I seem to recall trying to meddle with one, reasoning that if it connected one realm with another, it could be made to connect to other realms."

"And how did that venture go?" Red asked.

"I'm still here, am I not? I do...not remember a lot after the attempt though. Not for a few hundred years, anyway."

 

[Draedamyr]

"Maybe they are also of another realm? No that does not work, for you are bound. Hmmph," went Draedamyr.

He was no scholar of magic, but he had a keen mind and enjoyed the little game of logic. Back in Alliria they had a table game called Geriss that was played in public spaces quite often. He had enjoyed the challenge of moving the little black and red wooden pieces around. Simple rules, but a complicated challenge.

He could hear a brook ahead of them. At least he hoped it was a small brook and not a river they would need to work out how to cross.

"Perhaps it is like forging steel. Enough power and work and you can make something change permanently. Portal Stones have their own limitations too. Like roads laid down by work done long ago. Roads that don't like being tampered with," he chuckled.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"I hadn't noticed," she said in a flat tone of voice. A couple hundred years with the worlds worst headache and a variety of interesting and unpleasant side effects from trying to tamper with one were all the more reason she needed to not try it again. For now, anyway.

"Maybe if there were more of my kindred around, we could fashion something via ritual," she mused. "Even the weakest of my kindred are vastly beyond the scope of any of the....other people's mages," she sad, neatly skirting saying lesser out of old habit.

"Working steel isn't permanent anyway," the blacksmith chipped in, suddenly. "Nothing is. We can shape it for a time, but eventually nature reclaims it. Why hasn't nature reclaimed the stones? Doesn't magic fade over time, no matter how powerful?"

"Unless it is maintained? Yes. That is universal across every world I have ever been to. Nothing is permanent, in the long run." Nothing is permanent, except maybe me. Humans might have thought the idea of immortality to be fantastic, but their short sighted vision of the future did not take into account everything that could become as a result.

 

[Draedamyr]

"Have you ever seen how a Portal Key works Red?" Draedamyr asked. His tone was light an airy, trying to keep the conversation so that the man wasn't left to dwell in silence.

"You have to find a mage who can lightly charge an item to open one. They tend to sell gold medallions to charge more, but I've seen an elven mage do it with a twig. There are so many icons for portal stones that don't work, perhaps without draining the magic from keys they fade and that's why we can't go to those stones any more."

He cast a sideways glance at Seska, showing just the hint of a smile. Good conversation, but carried out here into the wilderness. He had even brought wine too, not that it would last.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"One day all of the stones will fade, though," Red said. "But this blacksmith has never seen a stone, nor used one."

"No worries, neither have I. I am never in any particular rush to move about this world, anyway. I had no one that I had to rush to see, anyway." Cities came and went, civilizations rose and fell, and she never hurried her pace. She could visit them during their climb, their peak, or after the long fall to dissolution.

She caught Draedamyr's eye as they finally reached the flow of water that they had been hearing for a time. A babbling brook cut across their trackless path, the woods on the far side no different than any other they had traveled through.

"Anyway, I distrust those portal stones more than ever, now. Whatever they are, and whoever created them, they are linked to the demons we all faced."

 

[Draedamyr]

"You think they would have the power to change their magic?" he asked.

Seksa was one of the more powerful magic wielders he had ever met. Yet even with time she hadn't been able to twist a portal stone to her needs.

But he had seen the demons corrupt even her magic, so perhaps it was within their abilities.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"I rather think not," she said. "If anything, they created those things. Or else just happen to have evolved in their presence, and learned to use them after a fashion." The stallion stepped up alongside her, and butted his head against her back. The Sidhe nearly fell into the clear waters, only just avoiding to with a squawk of indignation.

Red laughed lightly. "Seems you've done something to annoy him," he observed and then continued. "You really think those...creatures are that old? The Portal Stones come from so long ago. I've even heard it told that they might have come before the Age of Legends, from well before them."

Seska shrugged. "I couldn't tell you. I do not recall that age," she said simply. "Draedamyr might know a bit more about it than I do, though; I have been...reclusive, much of my time on this world."

 

[Draedamyr]

"I do not know. So much knowledge has been lost with the waning of dwarven and elven kingdoms," Draedamyr replied.

"I am not trying to be rude, but humans civilisation seems to forget how to read and write every few thousand years, so much history has simply been lost to time. I can't imagine the demons can have come from before the portal stones were made without having shown themselves."

Draedamyr scratched the horses mane, but that didn't seem to entirely placate him. Perhaps they needed to stop and eat. Seska would know.

"So why now..." he said, knowing they had nothing but conjecture.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"That is what happens when you fight grand wars all the time," she said in regards to the elf's mildly rude comment. If Red thought anything of the comment, though, he did not show it. "It depends on how far back these stones go; it is always possible the demons made them and then were trapped apart from this world for a time. A long time, to be so radically different to any people here."

"Or they were simply they way they are now, then. The ones that were here, died off," Red added.

The sidhe nodded, even as she called out to the prim, reaching out and seizing the primal source of power. She absently used it to draw water from the stream, creating a bridge of ice above its surface that grew from bank to bank to the middle. It steamed in the humid air, but its surface remained dry.

"The simple answer is that the stones were not active before now, and now they are." It would make sense, after all. If these creatures could have come here any time they wished, then why had they not? Because they couldn't was the only answer.

 

[Draedamyr]

Then what changed? Draedamyr thought to himself. Something had to have changed for them to return. He took a tentative step onto the ice. It was already starting to melt, but the surface was textured and less slippery than he had imagined.

"Was this showing off?" He asked lightly. He didn't think it was; it might have taken a long time to find a shallow crossing.

In truth the conjecture was coming to a natural end. There were few more thread to tug at to unfurl the mystery. For now, the demons were behind them. The damage would follow Red for a very long time.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"I do not know what you mean," she said. And meant it. Draedamyr had not been with her long enough to understand, perhaps, that she used magic - both high and low - as a matter of course, without thinking. She used it for mundane daily tasks that many would have raised an eyebrow at doing, especially among the more...interesting disciplines of magic, or the more interesting groups. "We need to cross this stream, and this seemed the easiest and most direct route."

Red had little to add to the demonic line of thought. Truthfully, he had seemed a lot more aware of a number of aspect surrounding it than the sidhe had thought would be likely for a rural blacksmith out in the middle of absolute nowhere.

"If only there was a way to utilize the Stones for a different purpose," she said wistfully. Perhaps, with several thousand years of study, she might be able to glean something from them. Or destroy herself in the process; either option was both possible even if one of the two was far more likely.

She looked to the sky, and was surprised to find that time was traveling swiftly, moreso than they were. "Perhaps it is time to find a place to rest for the evening?"

 

[Draedamyr]

She was really answering that questions absolutely honestly. Seska couldn't see anything in raising a bridge of ice just to help them cross a stream. With an amused look on his face, Draedamyr shook his head from side to side.

He was beginning to notice how much easier he was smiling these days.

"Yes, let's find somewhere safe. My version of safe is usually a caravan on the roadside so..." Draedamyr was not the one to decide where they would be staying.

If she had given up on using the portal stones to return home, then he had to wonder what she would try and use them for. After a moment, he decided not to try and imagine what that could be.

"Want to go for a little walk when the fire is going?" he asked Seska.