Private Tales Those Fallen

[Saul Talith]

The next few weeks passed by quickly enough.

Life at Herath, much like it had at the Compound, fell into a routine. Things were done all around them and moved quickly without much remark from much of anyone. The news of Ana's pregnancy slowly disseminated within the Fortress. As Saul had predicted some welcomed the news, and others required convincing.

By the time everything was settled however the various Templar Chapters had come to accept things how they were. Most realized that if one tradition could be honored, than others would be as well. There was mutual benefit in accepting things as they were.

The Nine of course celebrated in their own way. Out of sight if others and in private a small party was thrown. Congratulations were offered and the friends found a new and unexpected joy in the surprising news. Even Berrick, the grumpiest of them managed more than a smile this time. It was pleasant, more so even than the victory over the Nisae had been. A moment of pure joy that none of them had been truly expecting.

Some of that mirth still clung to them even weeks later as Saul stood before the second gates of Herath.

This time the scouts had already reported back, and no wraith of Revenant had been found.

 

[Anastasia]

Life took a completely different turn than she had been braced for. Finally the months of stress and high stakes had dispersed into what could only be described as success. But was what was more ... there was small, but budding joy that entered her life.

With the general acceptance of her condition found amongst all Templar, she could finally relax from the fight or flight mode that she been coiled into from the start. As others embraced her pregnancy, she could too. The weeks of support changed everything for her.

She found happiness again-- a sense of lightness as the problems of the last year were shed behind them and a new start laid before them.

She walked with soft steps to Saul's side, her Templar gear shed in favor of one of Saul's tunics, sans pants. It's large length was belted at the top of what was now a visibly pregnant figure. The looks she would get in Alliria! She didn't care. A lot of sacrifices were already being made as the community struggled to get through the first stages of establishing themselves. It would be a hard year, they were already sure of it. But staring down the second entrance to be cleared for habitation reminded her that it would all be worth it.

She rested one hand on Saul's shoulder, her hair down for once and framing her face as she smiled at him.

"I told Marcus he and the other civilians would be escorted at noon to survey and make sure the rooms for fit for habitation." They had more than just evil being to contend with. A falling wall was just a lethal.

 

[Saul Talith]

Saul smiled down at her. "Good."

Ana had been working as a liaison between the Templar and those civilians who were helping with the Fortress. Most things had gone well so far, though with limited space there had been an argument or two.

Herath was huge, but it's first Fortress was the smallest of the two. As their numbers had swelled it had become difficult to keep every housed properly. It had come to a point where even Saul and Ana had seen their surrounding rooms occupied by families. Not too bad really, though the constant screaming was a good look into their future.

It would be better with the Second Fortress occupied as well, then eventually the third.

Though that was some time away yet.

"Maybe we'll find an officers room." He said quietly to her. "One with it's own bathroom."

Saul could only dream.

 

[Anastasia]

"A full night's sleep ..." She echoed, voice dreamy. Sleep had grown rough, for sure. She leaned into him, breathing the moment in for a spell before patting his chest and straightening again. She looked up at him, eyes twinkling with the mischief of their youth.

"Wanna go... sniff one out now?" Call dibs. Knock down some walls. Stab a vampire rat.

 

[Saul Talith]

He smiled. "Sure."

Saul was almost entirely sure that he could take whatever room he wanted without much complaint from others anyway, but that didn't mean they couldn't have a little bit of fun.

As far as they could tell the Second Fortress was safe now, clear of ghosts and revenants alike. Myrelle had gone through it, as had several other Templar whose talents lay within magic itself. Some had been adverse to the latter group of folks, but Saul had started to see their use.

Magic was always a point of contention within the Templar of course, but used the right way...there was no denying it's usefulness.

"Come on." He said as the gates began to open, the massive bridge to the second fortress ahead of them. "Don't trip over any rubble."

The Templar teased.

 

[Anastasia]

"Or getting spunked by a kegal," she teased back, never one to let him forget the time he had gotten caught up in one mid piss on a mission. They were shadow creatures whose venom paralyzed its victim so it could .... well, they never did figure out exactly what that creature was after. But a pantless Saul frozen stiff to the ground had surely been a sight to see.

She picked her way through the gate. It would be a week or twos work just to clean up the path, never mind restore the structure so they could be sure it could handle heavy cart traffic and things of that sort. She was reminded of the intensity of their task with every passing moment, but still, it didn't weigh on her.

The wind whipped over them as they cross, drawing Ana's shivering form closer to his. "I bet we'll see snow here," she commented, almost warily. Her Allirian blood was not fond of colder climates.

 

[Saul Talith]

"Likely in the Winter." It got colder here than it did back home, but he supposed that was part of the deal. At least they would have a nice view once the snows actually began to fall.

Supposedly in his true homeland, Vel Anir, it snowed all the time during the winter. Not as much as in the North of course, but enough to cause problems during a bad storm. Saul had never seen it himself, though a part of him yearned to one day. If only to learn more about how his parents lived.

"We'll get you some furs." He said quietly. "I'm sure there's plenty to be found around here."

They would have to figure out just what sort of animals actually lived around here.

The two of them passed through the open gate to the Second Fortress, the inside dark as when Saul and the others had first stepped into it. From one of the others behind him the Lord Captain took a small torch, flashing the man a smile before he gestured towards the left. "This way."

It was the opposite way the party had gone when first coming into the Fortress.

 

[Anastasia]

Ana laid a hand lightly on his arm, walking with him into the deep, dark corridor into the keep. Ana had no fear of the dark, their line of work often placed them in it, but there was something about the energy of the air that had her hairs standing on edge.

"This is going to take some proper airing out before it feels right to be in here again," she commented, rubbing down the hairs on her arm.

The air around them suddenly shimmied, tingling with her own antimagic as she gave herself a small bit of breathing room to the faint echos of dark energy she was so very sensitive to. She let go of his arm to carefully pick her way up a stairwell, head upturned and eyes wide as they circled to a wide entry way. Dust motes floated across her vision, she batted them away.

"To think of all the stories that have taken place here...."

 

[Saul Talith]

He nodded slowly to every single word, not ignoring Ana, but simply taking in their surroundings.

The last sentence she spoke struck a cord with him. It was the stories that Saul had always found fascinating, the tales of what Templar in the past had come.

"Two thousand years." He said quietly. "That's how long the Templar have existed."

In one form or another. Only a millenia of that was as a single Order, the other was in various different states of being split or at war. Still, a Thousand years of collective knowledge, of events transpiring and of time passing. It was almost unthinkable, almost to a level Saul could not even begin to fathom.

His gaze flickered towards a nearby door, the wood ornately carved. "There's a library in the Third Fortress, supposedly."

The Lord Captain said quietly as he headed towards the door.

"Kept safe at the base of the Keep." Practically kept like a vault.

 

[Anastasia]

Ana raised a brow at that, unimpressed by the statement. She was never found of reading. Or books. Or information. Some of the others were though. Myrelle was a regular book worn.

"You better send someone over there before you catch Myrelle with her head lost to ghoul or something," she mused, not doubting in the slightest that the woman was already itching to go sniff the place out and find this supposed archive.

 

[Saul Talith]

"The gate is sealed." He answered quietly as they poked their way through the hallway.

Here the walls were decorated more elaborately than they had been in the First Fortress. It was clear that the masons had taken their time, carved things into the walls which actually allowed some measure of scenery. There was something pleasant about it, though also haunting.

Memories again. "We'll have to figure out how to open it before anyone can get in."

A puzzle lock, at least that was what he'd been told it was called. Some ancient mystery put in place by the last Templar who had occupied Herath. It sealed the gates to the third and largest fortress, an inconvenience for them since they didn't just want to tear the gates down.

"Up here." Saul said, motioning to an ornate curved stairway.

 

[Anastasia]

Ana trailed her fingers over the wall, lingering for a moment before his call drew her to him. "We have so much to do here, we can't possibly be considering trying to crack the puzzle already.

She had already found that some orders were impatient-- heedy. Their curiosity and sense for adventure was leaving some to fall stagenent at this quiet keep. They wanted to press on where they could, but the civilians ... well they were in no rush. They had signed up for lifetime, after all. No sense in running themselves into a premature end.

She walked carefully up the stairway, not as graceful as she one was with her feet quickly falling out of her line of site.

 

[Saul Talith]

Saul nodded in agreement, though in the dark it would have been hard to see. "Not for a while yet."

He was sure that someone would start to work on the puzzle almost as soon as they saw it, likely Myrelle in truth, but there wouldn't be anything official.

The second Fortress was large enough to hold thousands. Unless several more Chapters joined them here at Herath it was doubtful they would need the Third Fortress for quite some time. In fact he was pretty sure they were years out from ever having to worry about it.

Unless something changed dramatically.

"Look." He said, flicking the torch forward to provide more light. "Looks like a living area."

Saul gestured towards the long hallway marked by a thirteen doors, six one one side, six on the other, then a final one positioned at the end of the hallway.

 

[Anastasia]

Ana perked, stopping for a moment to look at Saul with a bit of excitement. Without looking long, it looked like the perfect number for them and the others. Not that she had been holding that thought in her mind, but now that it was there, a small thrill was bubbling up in her.

"A copper I've already spotted the best one," she bet, taking off without him. She raced to the end of the hall, laughing as she felt him fall in behind her as she pushed through. Her laughter fell to a gasp as that ornate carvings carried themselves all the way into the entryway, and beyond.

 

[Saul Talith]

"Careful!" He called out to her, not worried about traps or anything of the sort, but rather the fact that Ana was pregnant and running over an uneven surface.

The cobbles here were perfectly carved, but all it took was one misstep...one foot out of place and she could hurt herself.

With that thought in mind Saul rushed after her, his steps right on her heels as he caught up. He took careful measure to keep the torch away from her too. "You shouldn't be running."

He admonished, remembering what the midwife had told him about strenuous activity.

A small amount of overbearing concern had set into him.

 

[Anastasia]

She whapped absentmindedly at his chest to sush him and grabbed the torch, pulling it in front of her and using it to burn away what cobwebs the search parties and not bothered to knock away.

"It had to take generations to build this place," she breathed, utterly unfamiliar with such signs of wealth when not in the direct presence of nobility.

"Think of all the wealth they must of had. To stick it into walls instead of missions-- they must have wanted for nothing!" She crept in, eyes wide.

 

[Saul Talith]

"The Order used to span continents." That was not a miss statement either.

At one point the Templar had nearly been a nation of themselves. A disjointed one, but still. They had owned Farmland, castles, traded with villages, and been powerful enough to challenge even the largest of armies. It had been a different time, far more plentiful than any chapter now was.

"Money wasn't a problem." He mused. "Neither was hiring construction workers."

From what he'd read the Order had it's own masonry division. Templars who worked only on Templar projects, building everything from manors to fortresses. "The Third fortress also contains farms."

Not just gardens, entire farms.

"They aren't kidding calling it a 'great fortress'." One of three the Templar had built.

 

[Anastasia]

"No kidding..." She walked past the entry way, the room opening up into what she assumed was the living space. But multiple doors branched off of it, which would soon prove to be actual private spaces that were built off this public entertaining room.

She walked deeper in, going to a cloth-covered square and yanking it off. Dust kicked up, sending her into a wicked cough as she batted at their air around her.

"Ugh. They could of left behind cleaners!" Her coughs fell into a soft laugh, the cloth dropped to reveal an ordinate wood and glass book shelf.

 

[Saul Talith]

"Mm." Saul agreed as he began to wander away from Ana a bit, his eyes glancing over the room as he tried to pick things out.

History was not exactly clear about why Herath had been abandoned. Most assumed it was a simple measure of population, that s the Order split nobody could simply afford to occupy the massive fortress. Some tried, but as the years went on it simply became impossible.

Saul had no idea if that was what actually happened, though from the looks of these rooms he could have bought it. Everything was covered up, carefully put away. Almost as if someone had assumed they would be coming back.

Wandering towards the edge of the room Saul stepped up to a small stone plate on the wall. He frowned for a moment, running his hand over it when he felt an odd switch. With curiosity he pressed it, and then suddenly there was a loud whirring of gears above him. His head jerked upward, watching as large contraption sprang to life.

Before he could stop it, the gears whirred into life, and somewhere a counterweight dropped. There was a rumbling, and then the stone plate began to lift.

With it came a rush of fresh air, a glassless window revealing itself.

 

[Anastasia]

"Saul." Ana had barked his name, reaching out for him at the first sign of response from the room. But she had barely made it across the space, her very hairs standing on end at the exertion of antimagic radiating from her body, before the window was revealed.

She stopped short, staring in confusion. The antimagic rippled out, her hand dropping with a slight shake to it as she looked upwards to find the source of the noise.

"...I... what?"

 

[Saul Talith]

Saul blinked, glancing up at the gears with a slight frown and then looking over towards Ana. The breeze from the window was pleasant, cool, but a perfect contrast to the stale warm air that seemed to stand within the room. "A different age."

The Lord Captain murmured to himself.

"We found some of these in the First Fortress." He told her. "They were broken but...I never thought..."

Windows.

Of course. To ventilate the fortress, to allow for soldiers to fire their arrows below, to offer a nice view of the plains when there was no attack. "It's like something out of the age of wonders."

He chuckled.

 

[Anastasia]

"Could it be that old?" She stepped forward, gingerly feeling at the plate and trying to replicate his actions. However one might drop this, the counter weight switch would have to be found.

She frown, peering outside and straining to identify which way they were facing.

"It's unbelievable." Maybe the technology was recorded in that library. It was the only thing Ana was now eager to see out of it. Imagine if they could willingly replicate this?

 

[Saul Talith]

"Not that old, I think." Herath was built long after that age. "Something left over maybe?"

He didn't have all the answers, he wasn't a Historian. "I wonder if there's more."

The First Fortress had two that they knew of, both broken and placed towards the front of the Fortress. The rest of it had been built in a more standard fashion, yet this...well this was placed right in the middle of a living area. That spoke of something more advanced, something with a different design all together.

"The Second Fortress was built only a few hundred years after the third." The Templar occupying Herath hadn't built it all at once, but rather in stages largest to smallest. Technology, the way to build it, must have been lost over the centuries.

Including things like this window.

 

[Anastasia]

Ana use to think Saul knew too much about histories like this. She had worried that his fascination would turn into harmful obsession. In a way, it had. But in the end, it had turned out to do more good than any of them could have fathomed. It was what got them here, after all.

Still, she shot him a dry look. One that suggested he was a neeeerd.

She walked silently past him, creaking open doors and peeking into the spaces.

An office. A... room of some sort? A tiled place clearly meant to weather water and washing. And then-- "Ah. A bed." She pushed into the past bedroom. propping the torch on a hook in the wall.

 

[Saul Talith]

"Watch for spiders." He commented quietly, following around behind her.

He slowly came to realize that this was a suite of sort, likely meant for whomever commanded the second Fortress. He doubted the Grandmaster would have stayed here, though it was lavish enough to pass off for it.

"Savannah has nasty ones." Saul continued. "Ten legs instead of the usual eight."

That was made up.