Private Tales The Last Resort

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"They have great need of fear," she said, bitterly. "Magic is far more dangerous than they - or you - think." She paused a moment, then shook her head. "Perhaps you might understand, but..." she trailed off. It was not polite to remind those of shorter lifespans of their short lifespan. Even if she thought that a short life would be a wonderful gift, though she couldn't bring herself to end her own.

"Anyway," she said, quickly moving beyond her near insensitive comment, "there are more than just humans out there. So many peoples. Traveling between worlds is dangerous. I got lucky, even if...even if I am a prisoner here."

A moment of silence that stretched nearly to the point of discomfort. She shook her head, sighed, and leaned back in her chair. She hated that it was designed for someone about two feet taller than she was.

"It will take weeks for me to fully recover," she replied. "I could recover more quickly if I was in a better place, somewhere with more background mana. In places less rich...it would take longer. And in places devoid..." She shouldn't need to continue that line. If Draedmyr had been pulled away from a place without food, he would starve to death. In a land without magic, Seska would succumb to the same fate. She gestured to his meal. "I am not sure when we gained the ability to consume things like this, but they are an aid, not a requirement." Just as well, when it tastes of death.

She stared off into the middle distances, seemingly lost in thought. None of it was pleasant.

 

[Draedamyr]

Draedamyr tilted his head to one side. His gaze became distant and unfocused. He might not have been utterly dependent upon magic, but he was sensitive to its movements. He could perform a few parlour tricks if required, but it was a skill honed by hunting rogue mages for coin.

"Hmm," he responded, his focus seemingly back on the room around them. "Not so strong here, but I do not know the area well enough to suggest an alternative. This town probably isn't large enough to have a resident wizard who isn't just a fraud."

"And you are not the first immortal I have come across and the other is significantly more haughty. I am not in a mood for taking offence today," he explained. "Perhaps when you feel more yourself we can get a horse and travel somewhere more amenable."

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"I am not immortal," she said slowly. Biologically she was, after a fashion - time did not touch her. Not even a little bit. Disease was a thing that might, but it had been a long time since anything afflicted her that was more serious than anything she had done to herself.

"I would strip to my skin and prove that, except..." Her eyes drifted around the room, a single eyebrow arched at the thought of the reaction that would bring. "I...I have died. Once." A delicate shudder at the memory of that, and everything that surrounded it. There was not a pleasant memory to be harvested from that tumultuous time in her life, back when she had been - and she nearly laughed - young. A few thousand years old, with bright eyes looking ahead at a future filled with power and influence.

"In fact, many of my kind do not live as long as I have. Strength in the Art affects longevity." And before being locked on this prison of a world, she had been terrifyingly powerful. There was a reason the demons from Pandemonium had been so interested in her, after all. Unchained, she could have slaughtered the entire cadre of demons they had faced with barely a thought, and challenged the most powerful of them with ease. It was humbling to realize how limited she had become since arriving here. Oh, the raw strength was still there, and she might even be able to use every ounce of it in a singular effort without killing herself.

But...

She nodded lightly. "I would...like that. Maybe you understand - a little at last - what it is like to be a stranger in a strange land. Always an outsider, looking in..." A soft sigh. "Your company is nearly enough to warm my heart, though it bleeds in my chest..."

 

[Draedamyr]

Draedamyr hoped that some of her memories from their escape had stayed with Seska. He had sensed that when he had been carrying her up the ridge that she had come to understand that he knew what it was to be alone and in pain.

The elf smiled. It wasn't one born of humour and it instantly smoothed out the harsh lines of his face. It wasn't a smile she had seen before.

"It will be good to have some company on the road again," he said earnestly.

He wanted to ask how she could have died and still be here. The expression she had pulled on telling him that fact told him that now was not a good time for such questions.

Some scars were visible on the surface, others cut much deeper. He suspected that the loss of her pony would last much longer than the bruises that had erupted over her diminutive form. He suspected that some saw a fragile child in Seska, others a powerful demi-god. He suspected that the truth lay somewhere between the two.

"My scars are all quite old now, the ones on my skin. A thousand lessons learned through small cuts. Well, there are a few new ones now," he reflected. "Until those demons no one had managed to cut me in quite some time."

It was a matter of pride for the elf who had devoted so many centuries to perfecting the art of the sword. The quality of swordsman he fought these days meant that the first mistake was typically fatal. That was something he could not return from.

"And best not to show me here. I suspect out here a naked woman would get burned for being a witch. A man would probably get bought a beer for such hijinks."

Country humans were even worse than their city dwelling counterparts in his mind.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She sniffed disdainfully at the comment. The fact that it was likely accurate, hyperbole aside, did not make it any less backwards in her view. Not that, if she thought about it for very long, it had been different in all of history - or at least the part of it she occupied. She nodded afterwards.

"I bear enough scars for the both of us," she replied drily. She hadn't really thought of them in a long time, and was shocked to think how odd it must be to another. She was, in all likelihood, hideous compared to the serving girls of the loudmouth who had assisted her with getting dressed, and yet it had not given her pause in....memory. Not at all, no matter how far back she looked.

She looked up, pale eyes like raw amethyst, veined white and purple, seeking something in his own. She could sense the wounding of pride that was buried beneath the simple admittance of his own wounding at the hands of the demons. It was a shame, for the flesh healed well ahead of pride and sense of self. She should know, after all.

"Besides, witchcraft would be an acceptable accusation. Child or halfling they would call me, or an elf," and she tried to make a soothing gesture to imply no offense to him.

She leaned back, and tried again to recall the events prior to her awakening.

 

[Draedamyr]

"The scars that are just skin deep are not the ones that keep on hurting. I have enough on the surface but they are just reminders of lessons. Regardless of what the silly girls here might mutter, you are beautiful Seska."

Perhaps she might have been around the prolific humans long enough that she would assume it was just flattery. When Draedamyr spoke honestly he meant every word he said and he did not form his opinions hastily. He had once spent an entire morning observing an outcrop of rocks as the shadows slowly changed their form only to decide whether he found it pleasing to the eye. He did not need to read her thoughts after the way she had stormed out of the bedroom he had rented for her.

"You are unique, powerful and brave. The ants that work in these small human towns don't deserve to pass any judgement."

He might have ruined the moment by letting some disdain slip through. He simply could not abide by those that rolled through a humdrum life yet felt they were fit to deride the attempts of others to better themselves. Draedamyr had heard the word elf spat by commoners too many times.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She looked up at him sharply, eyes searching, and then looked away. Was it faint color that stained those pale cheeks, untouched by time? It might have been. Such a rare moment to be completely out of countenance when speaking to another. She was not of the opinion that it was mere flattery, though she could not see in herself whatever it was that Draedmyr saw in her.

That faint color vanished, though, with his next words. It was she who looked stricken, then, as if by some terrible thing that only she could see. "I am not powerful," she whispered. A glance at the humans working their mundane lives, a look of something like envy stealing through her own features, fleeting but there for the barest of moments. "I am not brave." Time and again, I have not done what needed to be done. And how many have suffered for it? Not simply the ending of worlds, but the suffering of people, people too small to be seen by someone on the heights. It had taken her a frightfully long time to understand this, as it had for most of her people.

"They are," she said, gesturing. She could not look at him, at his face, into his eyes. She did not know what she would see there, nor what he would see reflecting in her own. Jealousy of the things she could not have? Envy of a life that had some meaning to it? She felt that he would be able to see into her soul, and see that it was as empty as the void between worlds. "They have a stake in it. They have families, friends, lives. They might be petty, dishonest, greedy, and spiteful...but is it born of true malice or misunderstanding? Born of simple haste, for their lives are short..."

She took a breath. "They have no right to be disdainful of you. You have done much to help them, even in the time I have known you." Flashes of memory. Children huddled in the dark, in a stone walled inn. Makeshift soldiers escorting them away, to save the future generation from oblivion, and the old elvish swordsman, steel bared to defend those to whom he owed nothing to. She did not see herself n these things, only the flaying of flesh that had once been a companion, and it twisted her heart with such pain that she should have cried out. She mercilessly crushed it, pushed it aside to be dealt with later.

"What have I done? Drawn the very thing that would have killed you, and them, and then failed to do anything to stop the deaths of those with far less time than myself..."

 

[Draedamyr]

"Word has come in from other towns. The demons did not come for you Seska. That one might have taken an interest and followed us, but they raided other places. Tales of wildly varying monsters. One is said to have eaten an entire town several day's ride north. I would have died if you hadn't struck that monster down. Doing that nearly killed you I think," Draedamyr replied.

She didn't seem to want to look back at him after his comment. That surprised and intrigued him. Had her respect for herself fallen so low? It was easy to let it happen when you were the lone outsider.

He followed her gaze towards the humans. They were the most common stock of their kind. They formed their little communities all along the roads that were starting to link up the large cities. If Melgroän had not fallen would he have been a part of something larger? Surrounded by family and friends and colleagues instead of a lone observer. He obsessed over his swordsmanship and lived with the humans in their great, stinking cities.

"I look down at their kind and even most of my own now," he said sadly. "I probably deserve a little disdain."

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

Nearly killed you.

It had. The problem with having access to such power was the temptation to use it, for good or for ill. And all power has consequences. Simply having access was enough to be a problem, as she well knew. The concept was called convergence, studied by her own people in a time long before the here and the now. Power drew power like iron filings to a lodestone, inevitably leading to confrontation that could bring about catastrophe.

Pieces fell into place, then. There were still holes in her memories, and from what she could remember, she very much did not want to recall the rest.

"You deserve no such thing," she said, surprisingly fierce. She still could not bring herself to look up, for fear that he would see the yawning emptiness of her soul. "You could have left them behind, and fled to save your own hide. Left me as well, for I was not strong enough to carry on alone."

She didn't need to say the obvious. He had not. No, quite the opposite - he had stood his ground in the face of a threat that others could not face down themselves. Disdainful of them he might be, but that made him neither a coward, nor callous of their lives. She only wished she could say the same for herself. There was no penance great enough to save her soul, if there was even such a thing left within to save.

"Those demons were after me. They would have let you and the humans go, and then..." She did not want to think about it. She had no idea what they had meant by 'she will be ascended', but she had enough of an idea to know that it was wrong. They would have had to force her to it, push her onto a path that seemed self-evidently another road to destruction. "If anyone is worthy of disdain and scorn, it is I. I, who have held myself from the world since time immemorial out of...out of fear. For what I might do, for what may be left in my wake. You have no such fear, and I envy it...'

 

[Draedamyr]

It had not ever really ocurred to him to leave her behind. It was easy to be callous and uncaring when the person you were selling short was far away. Not so easy when you knew you would probably hear them die as you walked away. Draedamyr didn't know what ascending meant, but the thought of her screams as demon-kind overwhelmed Seska with numbers stole his appetite.

He poked idly at the remains of his pie. The humans might have imagined those sounds too, but they would have been balanced against the thought of having their children torn from their arms. It was not so brave to stand your ground when you had lived so much life already.

Draedamyr sighed emphatically. He looked back at Seska with eyes that carried a great weight. Yet there was a spark of colour in those greens.

"I am often called out for taking myself too seriously. I think that some of those people should perhaps have met you first."

Draedamyr managed only the faintest of smiles in the situation.

"Might be that in the hypothetical world where I carry your scars and you have mine then we would each see the world in a very different way."

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"I have to be serious. I have...much to atone for."

She took a breath and raised her head, nudged tears glistening in her eyes. Even as she did so, one escaped to trace a gleaming trail down her cheek.

"You would not want to bear the burden on my soul, Draedmyr," she said softly. She scrubbed the tears away angrily. "I...do not know what you have done in your life to feel such a burden as you do, but I...I know what I - we - have done will never be forgiven."

She let that breath out, slowly. "It would be nice to share that burden without condemnation, though..."

 

[Draedamyr]

Draedamyr heard to quiet tap of a single tear escaping her attention to drop onto the table. He certainly would not have expected to see this side of her based on their first hour together. Very few, he supposed, got to see past his self superior attitude.

"No condemnation," he promised. He doubted his life would even add to her burdens. What was a lost past and some difficult turns in life compared to the loss of your entire world. He slid one hand across the table and placed it next to her own. Hers looked so small and fragile next to his own. Draedamyr simply rested a thumb on the back of her hand.

"How did you end up trapped in this world Seska?" he asked.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She had said it before, many times, but few truly believed her. She did not blame them, for it seemed fantastical at best. No one had ever really stopped to consider a simple question: who would lie about something like this? Who would tell a tale of such atrocities, and what could possibly be gained by it, except the fear of others?

"The laws of magic," she began in a slow, tired voice. "They do not govern every world. Perhaps...perhaps you have scholars here that know something of other worlds, but I have not found them. Arethil exists in its own archipelago, connected via portal stones..." She shook her head, wiping another stray tear away. "All just dodging the question. Its not as if I have not said it before."

She tried to sit properly in the chair, back straight, head up...but she could not look him in the eyes. "You claim humans are rash?" Her words seemed harsh, raw. "I wound up here, along with many of my companions, because we fled Tonan. We killed an entire world. Every man, woman, child. Every tree, every fish, every blade of grass. We killed it all..."

If her voice sounded hoarse, as if she were choking, then it was with good reason. That memory was thousands of years old, far older than any other memory she retained...but it was as sharp as if it had happened yesterday. She could still the sky, colored of blood and hazy with smoke, the broken land, the shattered cities. The dead, the dying. Could still feel the land tremble beneath her feet as sorcery the likes of which Arethil had never known - would, with the grace of its gods, never know - slashed into the heavens and the earth.

She could feel the pain, fresh, the scar torn loose as it always was when she looked back upon what they had wrought. "You protected people, but I never have. All that follows in my wake is death and destruction, the chains of a millions souls snuffed out before their time..."

 

[Draedamyr]

Draedamyr could tell she was recalling all the pain that was layered under scar tissue. She wasn't just reciting the words, she was living them once more. Whilst he hadn't meant to upset her when she was at her lowest, he wanted to hear it. Her words almost seemed to beg for judgement but it wasn't going to come.

Draedamyr slipped his fingers under her hand so he could squeeze it lightly.

"You protected people too," Draedamyr said. He had seen the fire in her eyes when she had seen the children preparing to flee. He tilted his head to one side just to see if she would meet his gaze.

"What did you do to bring down an entire world?" he asked. He wanted to know if this was a result of war or perhaps grand meddling. Seska kept blaming herself, but was there any truth there. Millions and millions. If he blamed himself for so many he doubted he would have ever felt that saving a few even counted as a good deed.

"And how...how did you die to still be here today?" The question kept nagging at him. He suspected it was going to hurt, but there wasn't a way of tiptoeing around it.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"Religious war," she said, still not at all in control of her emotion. Was it simply because of the loss she had already suffered that made this hurt so? Or maybe it was simply admitting to another what she had done.

"Even now, I think of the Great Goddess, the sword arm of Justice, and could weep for what was lost." Her voice was heavy, dead with the burden of guilt. "I was...a warlord. In Her name I conquered, accumulated wealth and power, drove the pagan before my armies and slaughtered hundreds of thousands, millions, without a thought for them." She looked up, then, baring the empty void behind her eyes, eyes that still glistened with unshed tears. Anger or sorrow, it was hard to tell. "Protect? Only my own, and even they were but chips to be ante'd away if it was convenient."

She sat back in the chair, feet dangling off the ground, but there was no mistaking her for a child now. "I personally led the circles that started the end. I was...one of the most powerful magi in all the land, and knew the Art inside and out, how to squeeze every last drop if potency from it. To undermine the defenses of the mighty, and lay ruin to their cities and their peoples." All those souls, grist for the mill of the Goddess. She had always thought that the souls of the slain were used by the Trinity as their source of power.

"Before that, though, I was...seduced by the words of a demon." She had not understood the nature of the Great Lord at the time, the selfish, self-centered quest for power. It had not done Avanth any good, in the long run, but the atrocities committed...

"The Great Lord, as he styled himself, was a prisoner of my people, as it turned out. He poisoned my mind with ever greater lust for power until I underwent the ritual of death, and became and undead sorceress. My power was magnified greatly, and the slaughter of the innocent - this time to feed his power, that he might escape - was unrivaled. It was not until a long, long time later that I was made aware of the deceit." She did not sound sorrowful now. Anger was there, clear to see, though her cheeks were still wet. "Tonan," she added, "was not Arethil. The dead can be brought back, just as the degree of power that could be wielded far surpassed the mightiest of this world."

"Regardless, under the banner of the Ordo Draco, I killed nearly as many people as in the Great War, but at the bidding of a snake, a liar, and a cheat." The anger could not hide the guilt she felt for all those deeds, so long ago. She might have spoken of them matter of fact, only slightly spoiled by raw emotion beneath the surface, but she wore her shame of it quite openly.

 

[Draedamyr]

No condemnation came from the elf, but he could not offer redemption either. Not for sins like that. He could listen. Listen for as long as she wanted to speak.

Draedamyr had never seen her as a child, but he had not seen her as a terrible warlord either. He had to adjust the filter of his mind's eye to see her in that light. To picture her in a much darker place.

Listening to Seska was like listening to Velaeri. You were being told great tales of days gone by and battles between gods. Instead of an embellished story you had to come to terms with the reality that you were listening to a true recounting of events.

The magic of this world could be dangerous. He knew this well as a professional mage hunter. Perhaps not in a precise, focused manner, but all too often it was unleashed out of all control.
There were tales of an age perhaps before even Seska had existed here in Arethil. Humans and dwarves had mixed their magic and craftsmanship and the world had reached a new age of enlightenment.

Stories varied as to whether a jealous force of warlocks laid that civilisation low or if the alchemists of the age tinkered with powers beyond their control. What was known to his people was that the cities of the time were now ruins where nothing would grow. The elves had retreated back to their woodland cities. He might tell Seska those stories another time.

"The Demons were never going to seduce your power were they?" he asked rhetorically. "What was Tonan and its people like?" he asked. He could not help but try and picture this world, perhaps in a time without great holy wars. A world where magic could shape it more readily.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"They were not," she said coldly. Whatever those creatures might have offered her, she had already seen where the road they traveled would lead, ultimately. She had no idea what their motives were, what their desires were - not per say, but she could divine the anger in them. Ultimately they, like all others throughout all of history, would fall into the same trap. Death and destruction, or dissolution. If they were lucky, it would simply be the height of power before fading away, and no one else would suffer as a result. "Vengeance' reward is bitterness and sorrow, and they will discover that truth one day, to their dismay and that of those they subjugate along the way."

She sat and thought, trying to dredge up memories of the past. It was like sand in the hands, slipping through her fingers the more she tried to hold onto it. But there were pieces, fragments more substantive than the rest that she could still clutch.

"It was...like this world," she said, a touch of sadness in her voice. "Humans and dwarves, elves and goblins. But there were also Droben, Sidhe, Centaurs." There had been others as well, but she could not recall all of them. It had been too long, the grinding of time too fine. "Great cities and villages, small towns. Mountains, forests, and all that you see here."

She closed her eyes, and recalled the great mountain fastness that she had claimed as her own. "I can remember stepping out on to the balcony of my Spire, and looking over great mountaisn stretching away all around me, the pristine snowfields. And the city stretching below me, the smell of all the life there..."

And she could also remember the ruins, rocked by constant earthquakes, smoke billowing from gutted homes. Those memories were always bittersweet.

 

[Draedamyr]

It was not easy to try and comprehend an entire world that had been lost. He had tried many times when Velaeri had tried to describe where she had come from. He was accustomed to spending time appreciating the finest details. Trying to picture such a scale of loss was beyond his mind, he had decided.

Seska was a relic of that world and he imagined that to some extent that must have been how she felt. Not being truly a part of Arethil she breezed through it, never quite immersing herself in it. That was despite it being supposedly quite similar, beyond a few differences in the laws governing magic. Sometimes, he wondered if he now floated through this world without leaving much of a mark.

Draedamyr still had that core of pride, but he was muted compared to his younger self. He had been a fiery young elf. He had not exterminated whole civilizations, but plenty had died by his hand during his attempt to reclaim the heirlooms taken from the bones of his birthplace.

He could have said something to Seska, but it would have felt like making word-shaped sounds for the sake of it.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She had her eyes closed, thinking back to those ancient times.

"It was the Gods, you know," she said, finally.

"It was the Gods that brought about the end. It might have been me, and others like me that held the sword...but it was the Gods that fanned the flames, that set fire to the world. Vain, spiteful, vengeful Gods..."

The jealousy between the pantheon had sparked interminable warfare, but it was the ascension of Oleana that drove the entire thing into paroxysms of madness. "When the Green Mother ascended to the heavens, that was when the madness took root. Before then, people were much as they are here. Content to live their own lives, while the nobles and the wealthy squabble among themselves. But with the fervor of belief..."

She shook her head.

"Religion is a great force, and depending upon how it is directed, it can be a force for good, or for evil. The vector for its sickness is people and, well...people are imperfect. Greed, vice, hatred...all drive the insurmountable power behind a strong religion to great attrocity. When you no longer see people who do not follow your point of view as being people anymore, then anything you desire to do to them is justifiable."

 

[Draedamyr]

"This world is not immune," he replied. It was hard to imagine a religious fervour spreading across the world to tear it apart. "Though often I wonder what happened to those who built the portal stones. Whoever they were, they left nothing else behind."

Draedamyr didn't want to turn the conversation to this world. Despite how dark her story was, he thought that maybe explaining it might help her feel more centred in herself after what they had been through.

"When my people were full of fire there were wars over deities. You don't have to go far back and the humans were using religion for power and control. Wars under the banners bearing the sigils of their imaginary gods. They change religions like clothes."

"And how exactly did you end up here?" he asked.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She spit, and her words were full of anger when she spoke. "Most people truly believed in their gods and goddesses, but there were those who used the faith as a tool to accrue power and wealth." She paused for a moment, and all the fire drained out of her, and she took on a distinctly ill look. "I was...I was one of those. I wish I could say I was righteous and pure, but I was as twisted then by the evils of greed and thirst for power as many I have since railed against."

And that was perhaps why she so ardently detested people like that. She knew their motivations, understood their desires. It was a shame that none of them could be convinced of where their path would take them.

She looked up at Draedmyr. "You should be able to guess. I created a gateway to this world." It would be difficult for people of Arethil to understand this, though. The laws governing this world and all of them connected to it were...harsh. The greatest of magi here could not shift themselves more than a few inches, and that at great cost. Travel by magic was, for all intents and purposes an impossibility here. "We could travel from place to place within the world of Tonan via magic. It did require a fair bit of power to do it, and the mechanics of it required tears of study. Essentially folding the world so that two places were the same at one point - a gateway. Going from one world to another required tremendous strength to do, and study."

Worlds were often only separated by the thickness of a thought, and even the most distant of worlds could not have that distance quantified in the same terms as terrestrial measurements. Arethil was a truly distant world, and her reaching it had been out of sheer panic and happenstance.

"I created the gate to this world myself. Tonan was dying. The world was already mostly barren, but the magic..." She shuddered with revulsion at the memory. "Imagine eating from a bloated corpse. The magic of the world was rotten, decaying. Vanishing, but becoming twisted, tainted before it bled away. The Gods had been the source, and without them..."

"So I crafted a gate, and I and a few of my friends crossed over into this world." She could remember the feel if the Laws clamping down on her, of stepping into Arethil and the gateway behind her simply...snapping out of existence, with a half dozen people trapped on Tonan. She wonder if they had ever escaped.

 

[Draedamyr]

Draedamyr nodded slowly. "I wonder how someone poked holes in our world to build portal stones. What ever happened to your friends?"

He wasn't thinking about portal stones or magic. He was trying to imagine her leading a religious crusade that had claimed the lives of so many. The potential was there. Even bound by the laws of this world he had watched her smite that great demon from the side of that ridge.

Yet he was also thinking about Seska when had the chance to leave the townsfolk behind. While the humans had ultimately left them behind, he had caught Seska's expression when she had watched the children emerging from the cellar.

Seeing her expression now he had some doubts about even starting this line of conversation at all. The darkness in her past could have consumed a hundred men as small as himself.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She squeezed her eyes shut. "The ones that did not make it across the gate...are probably dead. Unless they were lucky enough to find another capable of crafting a gate..." She shook her head slowly, sadly. She did not think it was possible. Most of the High Mages had already fled the world while she had stubbornly remained, unwilling to leave behind everything she had ever known. "As for the others, they are...mostly gone."

She felt her heart twist in her chest at the thought. It was something to remind her of how truly, terribly alone she was, and that terrible realizatio ncould nto be kept from her face. With supreme willpower she was able to keep from crying over that hurt, keep her face from crumpling from the overwhelming loss of...well, of everything. "Gone, mostly," she replied in a thick voice. "Some have died, others have...lost themselves. Gone into hiding so that even I cannot find them for whatever reasons. And others..." A sad shake of the head. "Without some purpose to guide them, some have simply...ceased. They are there, sitting in their spires, but their minds have left long ago. We...we cannot die of old age. Cannot starve to death. Maybe, some die, the magic of this world will perish, too. And then they will as well. Now? They are simply corpses that have not stopped breathing."

She could not imagine anything more terrible. Were they aware? Or were they simply gone, as she had implied. The mind vanished, leaving a husk behind.

"I...I have to live with what was done every day. My imprisonment on this world is just desserts for my crusade for power. To live with what I have lost - all that I have lost, and watch every last shred of it vanish a piece at a time. While I myself lose more, and more of the memories of what had been. While i stay alone, forever." A tear tracked down her cheek, unminded.

 

[Draedamyr]

It was like studying one of the greatest works of art in all the lands of Arethil. Perhaps the greatest landscape of a famed artist. Draedamyr could close off all other senses and just focus on something like that. Keep watching until he could make some sense of what it meant to him, to connect his own feelings with such a magnificent thing.

Then it was like watching time speed by. To watch the paint start to peel and the cracks stretch out. To watch the slow demise of something that should have been preserved in quick time.

Draedamyr had no idea if there was anything cathartic about this at all or if he was digging his fingers into old scars until they tore open once more. He wondered if he was being cruel, if he was digging deeper just for the chance to witness something so rare than because he wanted her to talk. To find how the truth made him feel, not because he cared how she felt.

But he did, he realised, care how she felt.

"Can't tell you what you deserve Seska," he said, thought they both knew that she hadn't been asking. He frowned. He could not quite do that human thing where you made a face that didn't match your feelings to try and cheer someone up.

"But we will ride together for a time and you can talk about what you want. And you won't be alone, at least for a little while."

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She wanted to weep, but she held it in check, albeit narrowly. The wounds that she poked at even now had never healed, and might never heal. She could forget the faces of her friends - had forgotten the face of her mother and father, could not recall their names - but the crimes she had committed would ever be raw and unforgiving. There were times she lay awake at night, wondering if her own tortured feelings meant that she was not the monster she had thought herself, or if that was just some conceit?

There were never any answers. So it had been for years beyond counting.

She suddenly felt her age, and it was enough to bow her under the weight of years. Any who thought that those who were so-called immortals did not feel, that those of power were empty, vacuous things that lived only for power...they were wrong. She ached deeply within in a way that few among the mortals could understand. What was one life to hundreds, to thousands left behind in the dust of centuries? And was it even fair for her to try and compare them? Were they even the same thing?

It took a bit for her to master the emotions swirling within. It always seemed that she had a much more difficult time dealing with them when she had suffered some tragedy recently, and the loss of her companion had certainly been a blow.

"You....know some of this, I am sure? I have seen the pain in your eyes, and know it for truth, even if I do not know why." She couldn't reply to the notion that they would ride together, that she would not be alone. She knew the truth of it, and it twisted her heart more than she would like to admit. He would either pass from this world as many others had before him, or else he would drift away, unable to reconcile the difference between them. She had said it before, and she would bitterly stand by the truth of it: she was a stranger in a strange land, unwelcome and unwanted except in times of great need.