Completed The Trees Grow Because We Bled Here

[Everleigh Ebersol]

[art cred]

The Blackwood.

Everleigh didn’t know why she had come back here. In the early morning the air was cold all around her, but there was a deeper chill within her bones. She remembered the walk here. It was months ago now but everything was still fresh in her mind. The cool mist that never left this place had hung heavy with the scent of blood. The damp earth beneath her boots reminded her of what it had felt like as she had to walk through those gripping, cold hands derived from Proctor Sicarus’ magic.

She didn’t stop until she was standing right where she had at the “graduation.” She looked at the ring, or where it would have been if someone hadn’t cleaned it up, and could remember the fights taking place. She had watched, upset but had remained quiet. She had made a plan to kill her opponent quickly and with minimal pain: a mercy kill.

Everleigh’s violet eyes saw something that hadn’t been there before. A sapling was growing. Right where a small initiate had stood when they were killed. Suddenly, it felt like she could see nothing but that sapling. She moved toward it as if in a trance, unable to breathe or blink. The savory-sweet smell of burning flesh invaded her nostrils. She squatted down low, her long purple braid sliding over her should as she looked down at the sapling from above.

How could it grow with no sunlight or water? The Blackwood remained cool because of the impossibly large and old trees with it’s dense web of branches so broad and wide that neither rain nor light could penetrate through.

“You might as well come out,” Everleigh said. Someone else was here. She wasn’t alone. So much for seeking solace in a place that reeked of death. “I’ve decided.” The poison eater continued.

“That the trees grow here because dreadlords have bled here.”

---

[short dialogue thread gonna try to keep posts short and just focus on the dialogue. There will be no action or adventure.]

 

[Chasmine]

"That is an interesting theory," replied a voice that sounded like what pale would sound like if it could make noise. Familiar? Maybe.

A faint light formed nearby the sapling, taking no distinctive shape but bending lower, broader to the ground as if miming the figure of someone stooping for a closer look.

"There are forests growing where once there lay fields of slaughter."

A moment, a pause, a cold silence.

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

Violet brows furrowed together. Everleigh remembered her voice. How could one not? She had a certain way with speaking that was eerie yet calming. The issue wasn’t recognizing who was speaking.

The issue was that Everleigh thought her to be dead.

“Fields of slaughter,” she echoed, looking at transparent light and seeing the trees behind it. She looked back down at the sapling. “You’d know a thing or two about that, wouldn’t you, Chasmine?”

Chasmine

 

[Chasmine]

"Don't we all?" the voice answered back. Still no figure appeared, but the light did seem to hover by the sapling.

"In our own way," it continued, drawing nearer to the ground and coming to rest, condense, brighten even, by the sapling's roots.

"Some of us... make the fields..." the sapling shuddered ever so slightly, a coldness forming around it that gently began to permeate the area, "some of us become them."

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

The voice didn’t confirm nor deny the name, not outwardly so, which meant that Everleigh had been right. It was Chasmine Grey. It had almost been two years since she had last seen her at the Festival, hadn’t it?

She felt the coldness and didn’t like it. She didn’t tell the entity to stop however. Something kept her from doing so.

“I think Dreadlords get to do both. We’re made to kill and then we rot.” There had been a thought needling itself in the back of her mind lately. She felt like there was going to be a fight, a big one that would be unavoidable. “I thought you were dead.”

Chasmine

 

[Chasmine]

That silence remained, the cold continued to spread, the hazey glow by the sapling began to grow in intensity and clarity. The quietude of the moment did not seem to be out of any hesitation or indifference to Everleigh's thoughts, but contemplative.

"It's quite romantic I think" the gentle voice replied at length as the apparition finally told shape, stretching upward as it appeared to rise from where it had been kneeling. The hazey, ghostly figure of Chasmine took form before the violet-haired Dreadlord, appearing to look upwards at the other trees of the wood.

"One day we might all be trees," and in a world that was both cruel, unforgiving, and entirely biased, the idea of every single Dreadlord that had ever been might be a tree was something nice to think about.

"There are many saplings in the wood this year. More than I ever recall. Who planted them?"

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

Romantic? With the transparent figure of Chasmine finally visible, Everleigh was left to wonder about why Chasmine was here. She didn’t feel particularly threatened, but she also didn’t feel relief. She couldn’t quite say she had liked Chasmine during her time at the Academy.

At least, not in the way she had with Zael, Liliana and Tinker. But she hadn’t disliked Chasmine nor had she been cruel to her (one could call Everleigh many things but she had never been the sort to abuse someone defenseless.) Chasmine ended up being in a positive yet somehow still neutral space like Henk and Alistair. Which was to say, if Chasmine had been present at graduation then Everleigh wouldn’t have hesitated to kill her.

But she might have felt guilty afterwards.

“I guess it makes more sense than believing in heaven or hell.” She had never been spiritual. Chasmine was right, it was romantic after all. Yet, that thought didn’t make this any easier to say. “We did. For graduation. We killed each other again. At least we got to kill them, too.” Everleigh tentatively held out her to caress the sapling’s lower layer of leaves with her fingertips.

“Do you think remorse makes trees grow faster?”

Chasmine

 

[Chasmine]

This news about graduation did not seem to surprise the ghost. In fact it was something she had been expecting, for death was a cyclical thing in more ways than one. The energy of that murderous ceremony was trapped in the earth here. In the stone and air and the forest itself. The Republic had their work cut out for them long before they'd ever decided there was a better way.

"No," she responded blithely with a slow glance to Evie and a faraway smile, "do you know who planted this tree? I would like to help them."

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

“Help how, exactly?” She stood up. No longer human but a impassive weapon. Even the memory of all of them at the Festival, playing games and eating food together wasn’t enough to damper Everleigh’s resolve. It didn’t matter if she had given Chasmine the flower crown or if she thought fondly of Zael and Chasmine carrying their stuffed dragon and gryphon.

That was then. A time that would never happen again.

Chasmine

 

[Chasmine]

"To pass on," Chasmine replied, her gaze affixed once more upon the sapling, "these lands are saturated by spirits who cannot find their peace without help. This is what I have come back to do."

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

“She doesn’t deserve it.” Everleigh said immediately. Despite her face and voice being the perfect picture of calm, suddenly she was seething. “None of these spirits here deserve it.” She was staring hard at Chas. “Don’t you you know what they did here?” She waved her hand around the air, fingers splayed far apart. “Ask them or whatever it is you do if you don’t know.”

 

[Chasmine]

The thought that finding peace in death was not deserved had not truly crossed Chasmine's mind. Given the nature of the two realms she'd personally lived within for the entirety of her life, it was easy to see how someone who was not as intimately familiar with the spiritual realm wouldn't see things the same way.

What they had done didn't matter to her, but it mattered to Evie.

The geist calmly considered this, detached from the emotions the purple-haired girl presently harbored.

"Then what do they deserve?"

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

“To suffer.” As soon as she said it out loud, she regretted it. Everleigh lowered her violet gaze, looking down at the sapling. What a awful, ugly, poisoned, black heart she had. How Zael could ever love someone like her was a mystery. She sighed.

“I want to see the Dreadlords freed, Ever.”​

Did that include once they had died, too? What would Zael want? Her shoulders slumped and she shook her head. The Old Way would always be a part of her. She didn’t want it to be so much a part of her that she would be like the proctors that had brought them here. If Dreadlords were to be freed then they needed to be freed from this past. Or something like that. She didn’t really know. She still didn’t know if they could ever be free, if she could ever be free.

“That sounds stupid, doesn’t it?” Everleigh asked, looking back at Chasmine.

Chasmine

 

[Chasmine]

Asking Chasmine if something sounded stupid ... what a novel thought.

Her awareness of how she was perceived by others notwithstanding, Chasmine had not subscribed to the idea that anything sounded stupid, in general. Life, death, and the threads of reality and magic and time and ether that filled all the spaces in between was a vastly, mind-boggingly complicated theater.

Everleigh might've asked her if a piece of artwork was bad.

Art was subjective. Apparently so was death.

"It sounds honest," Chasmine replied after a length of silence, then turned to offer Ever a wane, understanding smile. Her ghostly self shifted slightly, flickering in and out of sight like a candle flame in a breeze, "and if the dead deserve anything, honesty seems right."

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

Everleigh sighed, considering Chasmine’s words but the outcome of her graduation.

“Honesty is the best virtue.” There was a wry smile, her eyes dark and sardonic. It was brief. “A part of me wants to rip the sapling out of the ground and trample it. Another part of me wants to protect it.” It was easy being vulnerable to Chasmine. Far easier than anyone else, at least now that Zael was gone.

Of course, she had no one from her class. Only she had stayed at the Academy. Everyone else moved on. Except, it seemed, Chasmine. She was back.

“Why didn’t you come back until now? You missed your graduation.”

Chasmine

 

[Chasmine]

Honestly was certainly a virtue but Chasmine wasn't entirely sure it was the best. Every virtue had its value and she wondered what placing priority on one over the other said about a person. Or about society. Honesty could hurt, cause pain, damage or even break trust. She considered the curious loop of causality where honesty beget suffering and found the girl standing beside her and the sapling before her rather serendipitous.

Even if Everleigh did nothing, the sapling would still struggle to live and grow - its sunlight blocked and nutrients stolen by the aged trees surrounding it. That it had survived from seed and grown at all was rather miraculous.

"That's kind of you to think I would have graduated," Chasmine replied, "but that will never happen now because I am dead."

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

“You’re… dead.” Everleigh said slowly, looking over at Chasmine. Is that why it was suddenly so cold here? She had never seen a ghost, wasn’t sure she believed in them in a way that wasn’t dictated by magic. Besides, Chas had always been saying weird things at the academy, things about fae and spirits that no one else but her could see.

Was this another one of those strange things for her to say? Not that Everleigh thought Chasmine was lying, just that was saying the truth in a way that made sense to her but not to others. Yet as the silence lingered between them, Everleigh figured that now wasn’t one of those times.

“I guess I shouldn’t have said that the dead deserve to suffer then.” Was all Everleigh could say, looking briefly sheepish.

Chasmine

 

[Chasmine]

Chasmine made no gesture or remark to grant the confirmation Everleigh appeared to be seeking. The ghoul simply stared at the young woman, flickering in and out of sight in the crossbreeze through the wood, before curiously looking down at herself. There was consideration for her words. Serious consideration.

"Maybe I do," said Chasmine distantly, "I have not been able to pass on, though I can help others to. Perhaps that is my penance for what I have done."

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

Everleigh gave Chasmine a look. What on Arethil could Chasmine have done that deserved penance? Being high all the time? Feeding the stray cats at the Academy? Smiling too much? Being kind to a little boy at the Festival of Freedom? Surely ruining the Winter Solstice Dance wasn’t reason enough for her to be a ghost forced to let others move on while she couldn’t.

“What have you done?” Everleigh asked, curious as to what Chasmine would think the reason to be.

Chasmine

 

[Chasmine]

"I helped him kill people. Innocent people. He said it was the only way to help me."

Chasmine lifted her hands slightly and curled her fingers against her palms, a sensation lost.

"He lied to me. He left me there..."

Her image seemed to be fading, her voice beginning to grow distant.

"Now I can no longer feel."

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

“Who?” Everleigh said immediately, voice terse as she took a step towards Chasmine. She almost reached out but forgot that it would do little in keeping Chasmine there. “Who is ‘he’? Dorian? Edric?”

Chasmine

 

[Chasmine]

Wilting, fading, Chasmine's apparition seemed to be dispersing slowly into the shadow of the Blackwood.

Disassociating, despondent and drifting away mentally... emotionally.

"He took others. They're all dead. I didn't know. I didn't know..." Chasmine's pale gaze locked with those purple eyes of Everleigh, "... I'm so very tired, Everleigh..."

And with that she gave a shuddering sigh and dissipated before Everleigh's eyes.

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

Everleigh reached out, fingertips looking like they would get ahold of Chasmine but she was gone. All Everleigh felt was air, still chilled by Chasmine’s ghostly presence. The purple proctor swallowed hard, looking around her in the dark woods and hoping to see an ethereal ball of light floating about.

There was nothing to see and even the air around her felt warmer. She sighed, shoulders slumping and looked down at the ground. The sapling was crushed underneath her heavy black boot. She could see the leaves peaking out from underneath the sole.

She swallowed back the lump in her throat.

Everleigh left the wood, feeling more confusion than when she had arrived. She was only certain about one thing: even in death Dreadlords couldn’t be free.