Private Tales The Last Resort

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

Her face took on an ugly cast, twisting beautiful features into a parody of fae perfection. Somehow, the powerful glam became even stronger, the woman before them becoming a menacing, threatening creature out of legend. Larger than life, inconceivably powerful...and haunted by demons that could almost be seen. They were there, in her shadow, as brilliant as the sun.

"Hurt? You assume such simplistic things of us, mortal. we who are eternal - and she is, have no doubt of that - do not exist in your frame of reference." The unlovely sneer deepened. "Stop posturing and prove your words," she snapped. The aetherial wind seemed to blow off her - perhaps a glam, perhaps a power building to a crescendo.

Seska recovered her senses enough to pick herself up to her hands and knees, struggling to rise and help. She felt no strength though, as the the eldritch and otherworldly fae were binding her strength away from her. She looked up through a curtain of hair at the glammed sorceress stood tall and defiant, daring the elf to make his move.

 

[Draedamyr]

He went from slow and methodical to full motion in the blink of an eye. His sword twisted, what little light there was catching its keen edge.

His left hand moved too. One smooth motion to take the knife from his belt and to launch it with an underhand throw.

Dradamyr darted to his left, putting himself out of line with whatever magic she would use to deflect the blade. The strides were gone quickly and he lashed out at the fae.

He didn't know what she was capable of here, or even where here was. There was simply faith in steel in the face of her power.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

In that single instant of action, Lia did one thing, and one thing only.

She smiled.

It was a genuine smile, but it was devoid of hope, of mirth, of joy. It was the rictus grin of a dead woman laid out upon a stone, as though his blade had already struck true. Lia did not dodge either weapon; the thrown knife sank into her torso, slicing into her belly. Dream or not, the blood that flowed seemed very real. That singular blow would have been enough for an ordinary mortal, but not for her.

No, it was Draedamyr's blade that struck the telling blow. Lia did not try to evade, did not try to block the incoming strike; her eyes watched its approach as though awaiting a gift long denied. With all of the elf's might behind it, it struck high in her shoulder, shattering clavicle and carving a path of run through her breast before coming to a halt, bound in bone and flesh. The woman was already falling, then, and her weight was enough to dislodge the blade.

She hit the ground, dress a blood-stained ruin, eyes half shut and already glazing. The smile was still on her lips, though, haunting. Welcoming.

...the gift you refused me, once....sorceress....I claim it....now...

The disembodied whisper seemed to echo, growing ever fainter. And then, suddenly, they were not in the cold room, in the spire on the edge of the black-sand desert. They were in the woods, once more; at their feet, a woman lie on the ground, her blood already stilled and spreading from a cooling form. She wore not a dress, but the attire that the blacksmith Red had worn.

Seska picked herself up unsteadily. The dream world was gone, snuffed out with the life of the woman that had created it. Lia did not seem like much, lying there. A statuesque woman, pretty in her own way...but the larger than life glam that had made her seem so much more was gone.

A woman. Just a woman, trapped in an uncaring world. The bleak realization that she had simply been looking for a way out - for someone to do her the favor - struck Seska like a ten ton boulder, and she sat down hard, staring at one of the last remnants of a dead world with a tear in her eyes.

Because she understood.

 

[Draedamyr]

Draedamyr breathes out, long and slow through his nose. He could have stayed his blade after the knife struck home, but what would that have achieved other than extending her suffering.

He took a moment to wipe the blood from his blade on the grass before putting it away. Wiping it on the dead fae's clothing would have seemed such an insult.

Seska crumbled. Draedamyr stood in silence and left her to her own thought for a while. He needed time to try and organise them, but there was nothing of the history and personal attachment to try and sort through.

Slowly, he sank into his haunches in front of Seska. He reached out slowly and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"What did she mean, that you refused her death?" He asked quietly.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She started ever so slightly at his touch, eyes focusing from whatever distant place they had been staring into. She blinked that lone tear from her eye, feeling the twisting in her heart as her eyes fell once again to the deceased duannan. Those lovely features, smirched by her own blood, held a certain serenity in death that they had lacked in most of the ancient Sidhe's own memory.

"Isn't it obvious?" She said, perhaps a bit too unkindly. She took a deep breath, trying to rein in the wild emotions raging in her head. Her heart. "She has been...gone...for a long time, Draedamyr." Gone. A quaint way of putting it. Lia had her heart broken with the ending of their world, of all of their loved ones. Of everything they had known. They had known; her elfin lover could not understand the scale of loss both of them had endured.

"She is bound much as I am - not to end our own lives by our own hands," she said in a low voice. The scar in her breast burned as if to call the lie, but that circumstance had been subtly different. She had not died, she had simply....changed. "I refused to put a knife through her heart some thirty or forty thousand years ago," she added. Probably. It was certainly after the end of Tonan, but she was not even sure that the request had come after her arrival on Arethil. "She wanted an end to the suffering...and I, in my selfish desire to not be the last survivor of a dead world, refused her."

She hung her head. She was the last, perhaps, on this world. No other carried the tale of a forgotten realm - none other carried its ghosts chained to their heart.

 

[Draedamyr]

Draedamyr winced a little when she replied, but he soon recomposed himself. This was about her and her loss. He hadn't known her people, nor the real pain of their demise. Even seeing it firsthand in a vision didn't make it real to him.

His own home had been burned to the ground, but it felt like history to him now. Strands of memories connected to that place were had to find and sort through.

"In that many years," he offered, "she could have found death if she had been determined. She clearly held onto the pain of the past, but maybe she found...some good in those years between then and now."

He didn't know if that could have been true, but he tried to find something, anything, that might give Seska a moment of solace.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"Maybe," she said. She didn't sound very convinced of the idea. "But no one can know anothers' mind, and hers had always been twisty to begin with. You...you cannot know how the passage of time grates, grinds a soul down..."

And that, she mentally added, without taking into consideration any truly regrettable actions made along the way. Some days were worse than others and, with luck, there were stretches of time where you could forget about the past, but the past always crept back in. You could dally with a man - or a woman - for centuries, but the clock was ever your enemy and, in due time, they would come claim your solace.

It was a notion she had mentioned in passing to the elf while they lie in one anothers arms at night, the afterglow of both their efforts to forget what had been fading away into the darkness.

She made a visible effort to firm herself against the windswept wasteland of the past, and got to her feet unsteadily. The attack Lia had leveled at her had never been designed to hurt her, only to incapacitate her long enough for Draedamyr to do his work. Aside from a bruised pride, she was unharmed.

She stood close to the man, and leaned into him. This was certainly one of those times were contact with another was a grounding thing, and comforting beside. "Cannot change the past," she murmured, and shook her head lightly. "We should....do something about her, though." They could not simply leave her lie there, where the wild things might tear the frail flesh to ribbons. Desecrate the end of a life that had gone on for too long.

 

[Draedamyr]

"Ill sort that," Draedamyr said. He nodded slowly and pulled her a little tighter against himself.

Living life by the sword, he had always wanted to be absolutely certain that going for the lethal blow was the right thing to do.

There had been no doubt in his mind when he swung the blade. Now he felt a deep pang of regret for his actions. That was twice in two years. As made times as the century before that.

Relaxing his hold on Seska, he turned to the body. The tall dulahann had lost some much of her regal majesty now. She almost seemed to have shrunk in stature. He hadn't brought a spade along. Digging was going to be slow work.

He unbuckled his sword belt and set it aside.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"We will," she said quietly. It was only proper, after all; however and whoever had brought an end to the duannan, she had been instrumental in the forging of this day. Sometimes it is hard to trace the roots of a nightmare, especially one that stretched back thousands of years...but in her heart, it scarcely mattered whether she was the cause or not.

In the end, she was present when the end came.

And, in some small way, it might be fitting to utilize the Art for this final rite. The ancient sorceress opened herself, and the familiar feeling of potential took the air about her, the charged feeling one might have just before an important event. The telltale of magic, of high magic at that - regardless of what it was used for.

Like so, and so... she thought to herself, peeling off threads of unaligned magic, giving them shape and meaning, and then applying them to the task at hand. Some went to the trees at hand, and a branch separated, shaping itself into a spade while the ground itself writhed, loosening to make the work easier.

The sorceress breathed out, and then handed the shovel to Draedamyr, the air still saturated with magic as she held it.

 

[Draedamyr]

Draedamyr only gave a single nod in thanks. Despite her power, he knew it must have been taxing to call upon her magic after such an ordeal. Still, it saved him from trying to dig a shallow grave with his bare hands.

He took off his tunic, throwing it over a low branch, before he set to work. The mound of loose dirt he dug up seemed far larger than the space he made in the ground.

There was something calming in the simple physical labour. They had been fighting or running from the unknown for so long that it was almost a reprieve.

When he was done he leaned on the shovel and wiped his brow.

"Can you..." he looked to Seska and then to the body. He didn't want to ask out loud. It was going to be far more elegant to use magic to place Lia in the grave then it would be for Draedamyr to roll her in.

He watched Seska carefully. They were about to bury to last piece of her past on this world.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She nodded wordlessly. There was no need to speak, right now; no need to point out that she could have excavated the hole by magick alone had it been necessary. It was only the binding coils of the Laws that limited her on this world - a fact that twisted her heart more keenly now than before. No lamentation of times when she had been greater - fearful, even - only the tired, wearying truth of an alien world.

The prim heeded her command, as always. Prim, power of the leys, the primordial power of creation itself; it hardly seemed to matter what one referred to it as, for it simply was. And she used it to move the deceased, carefully and gently. The strain of lifting her was great - much greater than she would admit to any other, truth to tell. Magic could not be used to fly any more than it could to travel instantly from place to place. Lifting another with it was difficult.

But she managed. Lia found her cold body returned to the ground of an alien world. "I would commute your soul to Leto, but that god is dead," she said solemnly. She closed her eyes, and offered a hollow prayer to a deity that none remembered, the words delivered in a tongue no soul living on Arethil but her could understand. The sound was melodic, nearly musical - and even n its haunting beauty, it held no meaning.

All of its meaning had been stripped away. The war was over, after all, and all who cared gone and dust. All but her.

She should have shed at least one tear for her friend, her enemy. But there were none left. They had been shed ten thousand years ago and more. Even so, she could feel some emotion stir in her soul, something alien and unwanted.

Pity. And envy in equal measure.

"There is no dignity in death," she finally said in the common tongue. "No honor, either. Probably no succor from your indifferent god." She sounded utterly exhausted. "Well. The torch is mine, now. On until the end of all things..."

Was that the bitter wind of eternity she could feel blowing upon her back?

 

[Draedamyr]

He stood, silent and unwavering, as Seska bade Lia goodbye. There was little pomp or ceremony for a creature that had been close to the gods of her own world. At least Seska was here to mourn her passing.

That sounded cruel, to wish this upon his beloved. He pondered that for a moment, weighing up the value of the mark of respect for the departed against the pain it would cause Seska.

Certainly, Lia had taken no comfort from her presence in her final moments. It had been a vicious act to seek Seska out so that she could spite her with some of her remaining breaths.

Draedamyr waited until her weary words had drifted away. He offered a faint smile as he drove the shovel into the ground as a makeshift marker.

"I think it might be time we went somewhere with proper wine, good food and shelter," he declared. Somewhere away from this wild corner of Arethil.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She nodded assent to his assertion, but did not immediately move. Looking at the disturbed earth, knowing the frail thing that lay beneath it - dead by her own hand or otherwise, still dead - and thought how...inevitable it was. A storied past, soaked in blood...

...ending in some forgotten place on another world, not to be remarked upon or mourned in her passing. Ultimately, her own fate - be it tomorrow, or ten thousand years distant. Unremarked, unknown and unknowable. It was a stark reminder that she was not of this world, nor of any world. Adrift, fathomless...

...and looking upon Draedamyr, the affection she felt seemed twisted and inappropriate. Here was a mortal being, someone that could feel and understand...while she simple continued.

"Some company beyond ourselves would do well," she admitted. Although she was entirely uncertain whether others would make her feel less alien...or more. "Lead the way, m'lord," she said, forcing a mocking bow and a smile to hide her discomfiture.

 

[Draedamyr]

To say that the bar held an atmosphere would be too high a praise. It had a hubbub perhaps. Enough noise to allow every conversation to continue in relative privacy, without making the place seem any more appealing.

The town of Hertrebar was an old one. It was large enough to have a stone wall and its fair share of pickpockets and drunkards. What it lacked was demons or any kind of magical creature that could cause any more pain. It was also on a trade route that afforded it some perfectly acceptable wine.

"We should stay a few days?" Draedamyr proposed. He took a sip from a simple wooden goblet of wine. There was bread on the table, but someone would fetch them some proper food in short order.

It was a stepping stone towards Alliria, but had the town had enough comforts. Trouble had found them at almost every corner. He was happy to delay their journey a time to remind himself a little of who he was and to take some time to try and unpick everything Seska had been through.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

The wilderness lay behind them, and the comforting solitude that she craved but knew, deep down, that she did not need right now. This was hardly the first time her world had been turned upside down, and would likely not be the last. The scars still ached, the new wounds still bled, and there was nothing that could change that.

She had been uncommonly quiet the last several days, turned in to look inward rather than out. Even now, seated at a table amid what could pass for a press of humanity in its many varied forms, she seemed withdrawn. The smile she offered Draedamyr seemed perfectly content to the casual observer, but there was an emptiness in her eyes that spoke of pain.

And of loss.

"Should," she agreed. She sounded tired in a way that no amount of travel could account for. "Would be good to rest my feet a while. Or Respite's hooves, for that matter," she said, and offered a hollow smile to her lover that she knew could not hide the turmoil and pain within.

 

[Draedamyr]

He wished that he had some magic power to try and draw her back from this dark place. He did not.

When they had first met he had been slowly coming back up for air after a year of mourning. His most talented apprentice had turned bad and died by his hand. Even that experience wasn't a fraction of what Seska had been through. Possibly the last of her kind, gone.

A better person might have had a plan. All he had was waiting long enough for her to find her own way back. He was here and she hoped she knew that. Maybe if he had spent more of his life caring about other people but he had often been a driven and selfish man.

"Well then. Wine."

He drained his mug and held it up for a refill.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She stared into the rich red surface of the wine before her, but did not drink of it. After a few moments, she sighed and looked up and around the room. Straightening on a chair designed for someone not quite as petite as she was, she shook her head slowly.

"So long away from what passes for civilization," she said slowly, and looked around at the people. Many, disparate and varied with so little commonality between them. It occurred to her - not for the first time - that she was living in a fallen world. Sure, everyone got along just fine...but here, much as her own had persisted in a broken state for a time following the fall of Mo'pri, so too did Arethil limp along after the Age of Legend.

"As if I haven't thought of it before, but it seems that everywhere I go is little more than remnants built upon the ashes of what came before," she said to herself, eyes locked on the middle distance.

 

[Draedamyr]

What passes for civilisation.

That was one way of putting it. The humans didn't really care about the remnants of elven cities that had been lost, nor the ruins of a time when men and dwarves had pushed the world to breaking point.

Perhaps that was wise. No one knew what had been the downfall of that age. Draedamyr expected it was intrinsically linked to their tinkering

Draedamyr did not think it a time to try and argue against her point. Just as he had been when they first met, she was in a period of mourning. It took time for an old mind to work through such pain.

But he would be here for her.

"There is a troupe coming through the town tomorrow. Apparently the playwright is not terrible..." He said, with a casual wave of his hand.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

There was no reason to turn down the offer at distraction. And, after all was said, she did find amusement in plays that the mortals wove themselves - because, so often, they mirrored a real story even if the wright thought their wrought simple fiction and naught else.

She nodded, stared at her untouched drink, and then back up at him with implacable eyes that saw far and sometimes overlooked simpler things. "A terrible play is as much amusement as a good," she mused. "Especially if the players realize it."

She was silent for several minutes longer, before breaking it before it became uncomfortable. "What is this place?" she asked. She might know it by one name or another, but he was more of this age than she. "I know it not," she added - a half lie, meant to encourage something other than silence that she seemed to have trouble escaping.