3. Meditations on Pain - Keira's perception

Meditations on Pain - Keira's perception


  • Love is in the flesh that’s torn by thirst. Love is in the hollows where the snakes of hunger struggle

    She asked me to sleep with her.

    She says she’s cold, now that Lilin’s gone, and wants company. I watch her face, watch her eyes. She’s not making fun. I blink, look away from the distracting shadows under her jaw where the smooth lines of her neck begin. The old Keira helps, throwing up a query about whether it’s ‘just sleeping’ while I think. There’s only one answer, can only be one for her.

    Later, I ask whether she’s thinking of me differently, since she’s seen me change. Of course it’s different, but not that different. I think she likes it. I know I like it. It’s so good to be with her, so easy. All about control. She knows what I give her. I know it, too. No need for words or the awkwardness that the others have. Nothing is unconditional, but this is close. Nothing is freedom, and if we choose a chain for ourselves it’s much easier to bear than another’s.

    The children, and loves lost, and loves gained, and marriages swirl around like storms in dust. Serenity is already big enough to fence, cause trouble. Lilly and Fadia, Lilly and Elor, Wolf and Raisa, Pavel and Sabre, Lilin and… that paladin. It wasn’t so bad at home. Fewer people. This is like watching ants breed and swarm and die and breed again. Worthless, leaving no tracks but the scarring of themselves. All of them staggering from person to person in hope of a better tomorrow or a warm place tonight and they still manage to mess it up. All for nothing.

    Natanya says I’m mean and amused by chaos. She’s too trusting, too literal. Nearly as bone-stupid as Ginger. How can they not see what they pull crashing down on themselves? It’s not the chaos that amuses, it’s what we all do to justify why it’s not our fault. The orcs never attack because of us. The wives never run off and leave, because of us. They believe so often that what’s said is true when it’s only ever just said. How can someone say ‘We have no secrets from you’ and it be true? It can’t. She lies. They all lie. They just don’t believe it because they want to be better than the grubbing sacks of blood and bone that’re what we are.

    People, I understand. Watching them desperately try to die for something noble, something better than they are. They value themselves too cheaply, know they’re worthless but want to cover that with a thin shroud of nobility, for something greater. Lies and lies. So when they attack something, it’s to protect a friend. When they kill, it’s to save something else. Always a reason, so slick and pretty. The paladins are the worst for that. Gleefully warning that they’d kill if they see me doing something evil, something bad. The same ones are aghast that someone might want rid of them for what they do, what they believe. Natanya just doesn’t believe me. Thinks the Oscuran oath will protect her as a citizen, like some Holy Law. So wrong, so very wrong.

    The teachings I left behind still have worth as they flash before me again in the faces of the weak and the foolish. We see reflections of ourselves because we see with our own eyes. Natanya sees nobility who speak truth and hold honour as dear as she does. William sees tortured people drawn in conflicting ways, knowing that, in the end, it’ll doom them but unable to relate that to his own tactical decisions. Lilin withdraws into herself and Corran, not sure what she’s looking for. So hard to understand yourself and compensate for the prejudice you layer over what you see.

    Pavel understands better. Was good to work with him, Sabre and Zoma. More and more it feels good to be in a group like that, something to identify with, something more than individuals. I’m seeing it more in other people, trying to place them, see where they fit, who they run with. Jerr would say tribes, but… Good to go out and just kill some things, no questions, no judgements, just movement in the dark and bodies and blood. Think what he’s got with Sabre is good. Think they understand each other. Maybe more equal than me and Nicahh, but… Not sure.

    She gave me a key. In case she needs me. Wants to sleep with me. Drops little words like ‘always’ into conversation, when she knows how I feel about it. Then she asks if I want to find a man. Why? Why would I want that? People I let get that close I’d probably need to kill anyway. That or watch them die. Too much conflict, too many responsibilities. Not Fenmarel’s way, not my way. Just see what happens, enjoy it when it does. She doesn’t keep me around to fawn over her. Just someone loyal she can rely on, when she wants it, never needs it.

    Yes.


  • Change is the essence of life. Be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become

    There are some things about you that you can’t change and remain the same person. Like a stone shot through with veins of Truth, some things need careful mining. Always there is context, reference, and perception. Shaped over years by others and your own will. Limiting what you do, what you can choose to do. As time goes on, the frame of the window you see the world through becomes smaller, more rigid, the wall it’s set in more substantial. And you’re there, in the room of your existence watching what happens through the window.

    So why not change? Why not make a door with your own will, step through and see what lies outside the boundaries you let become set for yourself? Why not?

    Why?

    There’s nothing wrong in that room. It’s where you’ve grown comfortable. The wall grows thicker so slowly, so imperceptibly, that you don’t notice what you’re missing. Why would you want to change, to step outside, to leave what’s Right for you? It’s the room you want to be in by your own definition of what should be. It’s how you let yourself be shaped. It is as comfortable and safe as anywhere.

    Don’t believe me? Try asking anyone why he or she thinks what they do. Try asking a Cleric, a Paladin to change what they know is right. Every day their God will smile through their window while the wall gets thicker. Very rarely they’ll see something through the window that challenges them. Very rarely. All the time, we look and we warp what we see to justify our perceptions and ourselves. Very rare that you let yourself change because if it’s a big change, what does that say about you before? Blinkered, foolish, stupid? Maybe.

    I had a room, once. It was safe and confusing and it had a very big window. I thought the walls weren’t there, because they told me they weren’t. I used to believe I could see the Truth others denied, or some of it, anyway. But it was my room and it was safe. Even though the people outside told me I was seeing things wrong, how could I believe them, over what I saw? I couldn’t. I couldn’t just leave everything I’d known and step away. What would that mean for me? Who would I be, outside the room made by my past? How to leave those bits of the past behind, when they seem no more false or untrue as the lies they shout in through my window at me?

    Why not change? Why not become a clueless hypocrite like Hedia, slaved to misguided devotion to anything. Why not change and realise my guilt for all the death in the past, as some suggest I should atone for? Why not just give up, die, and go on to whatever the Lady has in store? Why not choose to care for all the weaklings and fools I came across, help them as though they were worth something? Why not twist, slip like a knife held in bloody fingers, and cut my wielder? Why not choose some anchor of simplicity and hold to it, too much uncertainty may bring wisdom, but it allows no room for joy.

    A confusing room to live within. Part of me must have realised that and planned a way out. Found a way to change when all the writing on the walls speaks of constancy, calm and obedience. Found a way to break out, or let something break in.

    If you don't create change, change will create you

    I knew he was dead, never expected to see him again. Knew it wasn’t him, really, still close enough to make me feel. Maybe that’s the key to unlocking what you hide away, what you deny, what you repress. Like anyone, the right word, the right sound can conjure the thoughts that break us. Like the stone that starts the avalanche. Another piece of comfort from the old room, the memory of what an elf with green eyes had meant. Classic, to cloak something new in the guise of something familiar. Like a knife, like a blow, like the enlightenment they spoke of coming, back at the Order.

    Because you can let something familiar in. Can see it, understand it and know what will happen. You let it in and then it’s different. It’s different inside, though, not outside where you can deny it or turn away. It’s there with you, in your room, where only you should ever be. It knows what’s outside and it doesn’t like walls. Doesn’t like being told what to do. A storm of emotion, frustration, rage erupts from the thread of lust it crept in as, and it just takes over.

    Always, my hands were separate things. The self, the body, distinct as doctrine taught. Hands cutting, legs running, mouth twisting into the smiles they want to see. As it should be. The self, not driven by emotion, only guided by it, guided by any of the perceptions of the body. Always I’d watched myself act, kill, speak, meditate or run and contemplated those responses. Thought becomes action. Watching, always watching, with a critical eye for how well I performed. The path demanded a lot of contemplation. Only clarity of judgement could lead you further in search of Truth.

    So it took over. It ran. It killed. I watched it spin and whirl and use my body with as much skill as I ever had. Moving with instinct and ferocity and… something else. More than quiet satisfaction at the correct timing of a curving snake sweep, there was lust and exultation. It knew it was doing what it did best, because it chose to, because it could. All the time, watching, adrift in the surge of emotion as the enemies hurt me, as I turned and struck and clawed. More of them came as I moved through the cave, more and more as I tried to get out and away. I remember smiling, realizing they were my hands, my feet, my teeth. The last few fell, near the mouth of the cave, and I walked out, walked on my legs, into the moonlit night.

    There are some things you can’t change and remain the same person. The act of changing something fundamental causes ripples through the rest of you. It doesn’t feel like I’m watching myself smile at them anymore. It feels like I understand them better, sacks of meat and blood wandering through their useless lives as best they can. That’s all any of us are, even me. I remember how it felt, before and how it feels now. It’s better, more honest, and happier. Looking at Hedia, Lilly, Fadia, I know some of what they’re feeling and… It’s easier to see why they try and cling to something. I couldn’t really understand that before. I think they see a difference too, I know Nicahh does. I hope she’ll understand.

    Does my new room have walls and a window? Of course it does. From inside we can’t judge whether it’s good or bad, only how it makes us feel. Trying to cut us off from that maybe isn’t the path to Truth I was looking for. What does that Truth matter anyway?

    We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.


  • The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.

    Keira sat in the gardens, feeling Nicahh’s eyes watching her. It was always different, like a rainbow with light meant only for your eyes. The Well was more than a gateway to disgorge random creatures from other places, other planes. It was more than a prison or hell for trapped souls. Together, there was something else there. Patterns in the chaos combining to be something like an Oracle. If it can be interpreted by one who sees it into something with meaning for them.

    People didn’t return from the Well. Scyth hadn’t, the Sister of Bones that had entered hadn’t returned. Something happened to them. Keira felt her own breathing even, letting the events flow over her and draw her into reverie. She couldn’t have gone into the Well because people didn’t return from it. Some shock, some explosion of power that stunned her, then it passed. She hadn’t gone, hadn’t left. Nicahh said she saw her go, left for several minutes. Perception, flawed and clouded by the body, the mind. Warping what we see into what we will remember.

    Keira remembered leaving the Bodak after the demonstration fights. Useful to see the power that Natanya could wield. Useful to see Foilir bested. The gnome was formidable, fast and skilled with poisons. Walking to the well with the Talosan. She watched Nicahh tend the wounds the gnome had left in Keira’s flesh. So skilled, so practiced. Keira watching, sees herself notice the susurration at the edge of hearing. The whisper amongst the usual choir from the Well. Her lips move in the garden as she frames the words she remembers hearing.

    ‘They’re in the deep. They’re looking… looking… looking for you’

    The Talosan hears nothing. Foilir hears nothing and stalks off. Nicahh listens and nods. Keira watches herself turn, listening, mouth slightly open, eyes half-closed. Something else there too, indistinct, but there. Nicahh nods again, says she hears it too – children, giggling. Keira shakes her head slightly as the Keira of her memory shakes her head. It isn’t a child, not for her. The Well, speaking to them. She watches herself step closer to the well, opening eyes, watching the lights, watching for patterns. This is unwise, notes Keira in the gardens, to look at the Well directly. Many have been taken, possessed, destroyed by it. Most all of them let it happen, let the Well –in- somehow. Bad to let that happen.

    She watches herself smile at something forming in the lights, the memory of the eyes washes at her amongst the remembered chorus of the discordant souls. The eyes are Sy’wyn’s and then they’re not. The eyes are Fenmarel’s and then they’re not. They’re eyes in the darkness and Keira knows that the familiarity and recognition is as like plucked from her head, her soul as it is genuinely in the Well. The past Keira keeps watching, smiling, knowing that Nicahh doesn’t see these. He’s already found her. No, these are for Keira, they feel… so right. Pairs of eyes, deep red, flank the green ones watching her, unblinking.

    ’Waiting… waiting… waiting… for you…’

    Nicahh hears the children, crying, pleading for something. She says she doesn’t understand, but perhaps she understands better than she says. Keira watches herself lean on one of the large rocks near the well, still watching the eyes, listening as the souls howl louder. Threaded within them are other howls, other cries like wolves. A pack, the sense of family, community she remembered from before washes over her and she watches herself tense. Nicahh still sees the child, hears them talk of loss, something else she doesn’t like.

    Keira in the garden sees Nicahh step back, fists clenching, muttering that it isn’t real. The Keira in the past is still listening to the Well tell her things she wants to hear, wants to feel. Not wise, to be clouded by emotion. Guided maybe, but not lead by it. Years of training to suppress and control those responses and she’s still vulnerable. This is why they trained, why a path of self-examination cannot illuminate some things. Why we need to be taught.

    ’Find us… We know who you are! The deep… go into the deep’

    She sees herself flush slightly, remembers the flood of adrenaline as she saw the shape come forward out of the darkness around the eyes. Keira watching can see the clarity in the wolf’s eyes, feel the honesty. It looks like appraisal and acceptance. She can recall the promise of that vision, feel it tugging at her. The stubbornness and training asserts itself, and Keira watches herself step back, away from the well. Remembers the satisfaction that comes from overcoming the temptation. Watches herself take another step back and bump into one of the large supports surrounding the well.

    Keira traces her own memories and feelings, observes herself thinking she can step away and by proving she can, that she has choice, not compulsion she watches herself step towards the Well. The surface shudders as she gets closer, holding her attention. Keira in the garden watches Nicahh struggling to talk to Ael, watches her turn back to see what it’s done to the Keira by the Well. She warns against going closer, but that Keira isn’t listening and reaches towards the surface of the Well.

    The explosion is mostly sound and something else that stuns and disorientates. Keira watches herself sway slightly before her head clears. She walks towards Ael and Nicahh, they’ve moved nearer to the Coppers. The Talosan’s gone. Keira in the garden compares the scenes before and after, watching the guards snap to a new position, closer to the well, as if they’d moved to watch something.

    She watches them talk, discussing her return, as though she’d left. Nicahh asks about the voices, sounds surprised. Watching Keira like she’d not expected to see her again. Aelhaearn says she was gone for a few minutes. The guards talk more about it, never seen anyone come out before and not be crazy. Keira in the garden smiles as she wonders how anyone can tell. Maybe it was just the lights, maybe she was invisible.

    All near forgotten as Yolande arrives and a Horror hisses out of the Well. They destroy it and Nicahh retreats for home. Keira watches herself head out of the city, returning to Jiyyd.

    No. Go back. Keira frowns fractionally in her reverie. Pulling the strands together of what she heard and smelt, where she stood, what she saw from the corners of her eyes when she first approached the Well and when she walked away to speak to Nicahh. Changes. Differences. They all had some minutes to move and speak in. Where were hers?

    She throws herself back into her senses, feeling the mosaic stone underfoot as she approaches the Well. The flash of pain, gone instantly as the stunning shockwave rolls over her. The snap is more noticeable this time when her senses are back, she moved around the well slightly. Didn’t walk, just popped in no time. And they say minutes have passed. Simplest explanation is that she did go into the well, and come out. Except no-one enters the well and leaves unchanged.

    ’Look for us… Go deep…’

    Not to the mines, not to the Well. Deep maybe in herself. There is nothing there. Keira breathes evenly, performing one of the many focus meditations of her original Order. All energy balanced, all limbs intact, no damage. She hears her name like a whisper as she does so. Nothing here except herself. We are all alone. Alone and… scared. Her lips move in one of the secret chants, wordlessly. A thought skates across her and is gone, like smoke in the wind. Something there, left by the Well, something that it drew her in for…

    Keira snaps to consciousness in the Garden, breathing rapidly, terrified. She looks around frantically. The orphans watch her, not used to her being anything other than calm. One of the eldest asks if she’s okay. She stares back, muttering a whispered phrase to herself, dragged back from somewhere, one of the Lady’s secrets, perhaps.

    ’Beware the children… Beware!’

    // Thanks as always to DM Nightfall, the master of the Well.


  • You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change your expectation.

    Keira looked over the map and smiled. This was why she loved the City. Norwick’s militia had given her licence to encourage confession for crimes and to enforce the law as appropriate. Jarek’s submission to the Crystals had finally forced her away to the darkness and quiet of Oscura. There her skills weren’t rare or especially in demand by the Tribunal, even though the private commissions were lucrative.

    The City was one of the places she felt she belonged. The people she’d killed, people she’d tortured, some of them at the direct orders of a Senator whose goodness and faith were not usually questioned. She was in the right place. Amidst the hypocrisy and expediency of the Senate, she and the other Scouts performed the actions necessary to ensure the city’s survival and supremacy in the region. This would be a joy to serve in.

    Fighting undead or constructs was pointless for her. Years of indoctrination back at the order of the purity and holiness of pain had instilled a certain lack of comprehension when dealing with things that had to thought to feel loss, or heart to feel pain. No matter the mechanist threat, there were others who would fall first in that fight. Her skills would be better served elsewhere, in a role like this.

    Feeding on mistrust, feeding on fear and hate. Emotional response, so rapid and yet so often wrong and misguided. A task, then to misguide it. A foe that’s given to unspeakable actions, they would no doubt expect such from another. With all perception, it is easiest to hide a lie within a greater truth. To think as another, to kill like they do, silently. To fade into the darkness as if you were never there. Her shadows, her will, another secret in veneration to the darkness. She smiled, thinking of how she’d changed, what she’d learned in the years.

    The younger Keira had killed the ones responsible for sacking the monastery with diligence and care, hunting them down over the years to find older men, lacking in strength, tied down with cares and lovers, children. Dependency and weakness. Thinking back, there’d been no fire in her, no real appreciation of vengeance. She had worked through them by rote, as she’d learned in the cells and the library. Immobilise resistance, primary incisions. Build insecurity through indirect action, pets, livestock, incidental targets to put the primary target off-balance.

    Now, she was beginning to understand. Only rarely could you depend on another’s will to perform what you asked. Much better to act yourself, alone, quietly. Only one mouth to betray a secret. Some secrets could never be spoken, death would come first, and those who’d ask would likely never call her spirit back. No, better to plan for these things quietly.

    She looked over the maps the scout had returned with, noting the cookfires, the communal tents, the places where the children had been observed sleeping. It wouldn’t be a fair fight, but no fights were fair. If discovered, the resistance would be fierce and the whole point of the exercise would be doomed. The whole point was to strike as the very point of the Darkness. Gone, like a ghost, come the morning.

    Nothing left for them come morning except loss, pain and the answer we want them to find.


  • Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.

    Corde had been unspecific as to what was required, only that it was better not to be seen. She listened carefully to the location, south of Jiyyd, near the plains and nodded.

    Keira out in the snows of the pass, dead hobgoblin nearby. She drank the potion, feeling herself fade. Stripping the robes of the Sisterhood from her, the trappings of that life folded neatly and packed away. Invisibly, she shivered, pulling on the darker underclothes and the vestments of her faith. The hood, hair tucked up inside, the mask, the gloves. Last came the boots, hardly worn, new from the city. She dropped the sharp pebble into the sole of the left boot and stood, weight shifted to her right, unbalanced but not critically so.

    Satisfied, she rolled the body of the hobgoblin over the scuffs where she'd changed. In time the snows would cover again, another secret of the Pass.

    The limping ungainly run was unaccustomed. Preparation always the key. Knowing she wasn't a bard or performer to do this, only able to do, to be what she was. She had an injury, she limped because of it. Truth. She checked again whilst waiting unseen in the trees near the plains. No skin visible, no hair visible. No cloak.

    Corde appeared, moving swiftly with purpose to the south. She followed, past the unsuspecting orcs, killing a couple in passing with the heavier powerful rakes of the tiger style, more suited to these gloves than the ones Keira habitually wore. They press on over the river and into the land of the Featherlights.

    Silent she follows, hearing Corde greet the guard pleasantly before beating him to the ground with two swift blows. A single kill, or something more? He calls Her blessing and darkness falls around them. Again and Nessa's eyes are cleared of the darkness. They run on, shrouded towards the fields where the warriors are taking their ease, standing around.

    Darkness sweeps over them. Darkness and death. Darkness and pain. Corde's vicious strikes downing several, her own claws finding grim purchase in throats, faces and other softer places. Always good to fight alongside someone, opportunity provides distractions, weakness to exploit.

    More fall and then the darkness lifts. The watching warriors loose arrows and renew their defence with a spirited axe-charge. The arrows bite deep and Nessa knows this is not a time to stand. She limps to the cover of a rock and drinks a potion carefully through her mask. Covered by the invisibility she limps back towards the Darkness surrounding Corde.

    'Leave'

    It's not a request. Nessa pads out through the streambed onto the plains. A man watches. Balding, clad in the wraps and fetishes of the Shaman of the Featherflights. He's been in Jiyyd before, mocking their ways, their walls. Wise. She watches him, steps carefully and quietly to the grass of the featherflight lands as he leaves his hill, heading to his home and the diminishing sounds of combat.

    Crouched, in the trees, Nessa watches him walk past as another thought enters her head from Corde. She fixes her gaze on the Shaman and wills Corde to see it through her. All she can do. Invisible still she pads past the trees, through the stream and back onto the plains. Invisible, unseen in the mouth of the spider cave, she heals her wounds. The arrows, the axes fall away from her. The vestments, the mask, the gloves all packed away. Cave is too distant, though. Too easy to track from. The boots remain while the invisibility does.

    Silent, still invisible on the road into Jiyyd, boots covered by the Sisterhood robe. The gates gone again, the result of some attack or other. Late afternoon. Travellers from the pass are coming in, seeking the Inn, seeking refreshements. She takes her boots off on the road near the trees, scuffing her feet in the road as she carefully steps around other travellers with consummate grace, always an eye on the roads, out of sight from the guards. Packs the boots away invisibly, watching the caravan approach. Replaces her usual Turmish boots, good for grip in the wet, oddly insulating against lightning.

    Keira walks back along the trail of the caravan, beasts, feet and wheels to the sign for the Sisterhood. Pads to the cowsheds and punches a fencepost to remove the invisibility. She turns and moves to take up position, nodding curtly to Clara at the gates.

    They both see a Featherflight man, with several lightly armed trackers approach on the road, heading to Jiyyd. They round the trees and Keira steps forwards to count their numbers as they head into the village. She returns to her position at the gates and watches them pass by again as they return to the plains.

    She watches them go.


  • It is the law of humanity that we must know good through evil. No great principle ever triumphed but through much evil. No one ever progressed to greatness and goodness but through great mistakes.

    Nicahh said it was about losing control. She was right. That wasn’t all though, it was about fear and choice also. It was about commitment, always about commitment. They never understood, happy in their certainties of recognition. What to do, what to be, always in doubt. Keira felt no different, still. A Talassan slain, a man who’d attacked Jiyyd repeatedly removed. To what gain, what end? Maybe another harvest next year. All worthless grubbing for a future that will not come.

    The paradox again. Survival, existence itself, is pointless, futile and… wrong. Why not let it go, fall into the absence of being that She promised, that perfection of ultimate lack of perception. Too easy. Where then is the loss and the struggle? Whilst the absence of anything is purest, to appreciate it, to pay Her the respect She’s due there must be sacrifice. In this again, Keira knew she was weak and flawed. Without anything to cling to, she had little to lose. Hardly worthy. There was still the truth that we build suffering for ourselves, by our own actions.

    She had failed to find any lycanthropes that would talk civilly in a few months of searching quietly. The few samples of Lilin’s blood taken surreptitiously around the Sisterhood had proved inert after following carefully some of Elvadriel’s notes. Perhaps something was wrong with the method. Perhaps it was legitimate blessing of Sharess that would not likely be passed to Keira. The direct route seemed more likely to bear fruit. Mixing blood would be best, but hard to be sure of the quantities required. Harder still to take that from a cooling corpse. Perhaps Mecc would be able to arrange a meeting with one more amenable to trade.

    The feeling of loss still arose in meditation. The memory of that closeness, that bond with her pack. Nicahh doubted that she’d have the control to recognise friend or pack if she succeeded. Sy’wyn had succeeded, though. Sy’wyn had dragged her far enough down his path and that of Fenmarel. It nagged seductively at her when she watched the marketplace in Jiyyd. Why not? They care nothing for her, so why not accept that she walks alone. Why not take from them their tiny human span, their casual butchery of the land. Why not justify your action with your ability. Why not use those years of training, the years of quiet skill, the years of murder to make a difference to their lives? Why not make a mark upon them?

    She ran often when thought took her like that. The fear of discovery, fear of death still great inside her. Shouldn’t die in the service of the mundane. Die for what you believe. Die, making a difference. Dying is only the last action of life. She would not be Fenmarel’s Wolf. He wouldn’t want her. He wouldn’t want that sort of service, loyalty, devotion. It had made Sy’wyn uncomfortable, it would likely not impress his God. She thought more on control and death. If she succeeded, the paladins would be that much keener to see her dead. It would likely bring her death forward, to weeks or months hence rather than the hundreds of years a quieter elf might expect. It would also make her stronger. Elvadriel had told her so. It might take away the fear, grant some resolve that was usually lacking.

    She could taste it still, like blood in her mouth and she knew it was what she wanted.

    It was a small step, to plan and accept her own death. Greater to plan what might lie around it. The subtle secrecy and misdirection that her death could provide for the greater plan. This was a work worthy of Her notice, if it succeeded.

    The weave still corrupted, except for the Shadow-Weave. Perhaps it was the last days spoken of and this plane would collapse. Almost too much to hope for and certainly not easy to accomplish. The disparate groups of heroes so eager to sacrifice themselves for a cause could still not agree on how best to retrieve the Orbs or to deal with the Drow. Perhaps the druids and the paladins could be persuaded to strike at the Yuan-Ti. Maybe then, they would be more vulnerable to the Drow taking the second Orb. Keira frowned, all too aware of her limited strategic abilities. She needed Corde, or someone to plan this sort of thing. Nicahh wouldn’t, she’d drifted too far away from the clarity of purpose that had been so attractive earlier. Aspera had left, Elvadriel was still travelling. The Banites were obsessed with ruling the world, not removing it. Perhaps she could arrange a meeting with a representative of the Drow, maybe via the Tribunal.

    Maybe the Legion would be useful to mount such an attack. They might welcome direct action after so much indecision. Killing the Yuan-Ti must surely be a good thing. Lyte was respected by the Druids, Grag by the Paladins… It could work. With Nox’s departure the divisive influence of the Phoenix had diminished, those that remained could be persuaded to attack. Even Jerr had only offered to defend the Yuan-Ti against the Drow. He’d understand the need to make the Orb safe. With an Orb to study even Spellweaver might be able to repair the damage wrought by the Drow.

    The Orb in transit, relatively unguarded and unwarded should be easier to take.

    Keira paused, contemplating the plan. Total destruction of the plane, the home of the elves, the humans, the new intake of orphans at the Sisterhood, the City, everything supposedly one should care for. It was different. This was not letting something die, or inflicting harm in a way that any being could realistically contemplate. This was relief from the pain and distress that fuelled the world.

    This was absolution.


  • The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but an immense altar on which every living thing must be sacrificed without end, without restraint, without respite until the consummation of the world, the extinction of evil, the death of death.

    Keira sat, listening to the sounds of the cave. She felt and heard no wind down here. She saw no light from outside, the shapes all given vague outlines to her vision by the dim phosphorescence of the patches of fungi on the walls. Keira closed her eyes and listened to the darkness.

    She was alone, that was one of the truths. The faint, rapid breathing from the other person in the cave was an anomaly of perception. She was alone. The bound man was dead, dedicated to Her service, slain in the darkness where no one would know and doubtful any would find him while he was still recognizable.

    Her way was silence, nothingness and contemplation. It was also a path of secrets and darkness. Keira crept towards the man and whispered softly in his ear, making him jump.

    “Going to tell you something. She knows already, but no one else does. A secret, a gift to you. For you to take with you to Her.”

    The man exhaled sharply as Keira moved, straddling his body. Her hands caressed the sides of his face with pale fingers, barely visible in the darkness. She waited until the muffled sounds from the gag faded and his breathing evened out.

    _“I don’t know what you think, how you feel. I see you wandering about up there without purpose, crawling towards your deaths. I don’t understand why you don’t see the lies you tell yourself to distract you.

    “I see the families, the children, the lovers the friends. I don’t understand them. I see the weakness, the dependence. I see the things to exploit, the doubts to widen. I see the weapons to use against you. I didn’t understand why you’d let yourselves feel that way, how you could allow yourselves that frailty. I didn’t understand until recently.

    “I felt it, I felt what it must be like to know you’re part of something. To know deeper than words what you belong to. I felt that they loved me, wanted me, were part of me. I felt them die. I knew such anger then. I wanted to kill and kill and kill until those responsible had fallen, never to do that again. To anyone.”_

    Keira paused, tracing her thumbs over the man’s eyelids, resting them there for a moment. She smiled in the darkness, feeling his pulse rise, hearing his breathing quicken and choking, snuffling sounds from behind the gag. She waited again, thumbs ready on his eyelids until he’d calmed himself. It took a while.

    _“They took that away from me. I felt something that Sy’wyn had tried to explain, tried to show me and I couldn’t. I heard his descriptions of that feeling. That life, elves, things were connected. As a wolf, I understood. The lies and fabrications we make of the world weren’t there, just perception and clarity.

    “I miss it. As control came back to me, in my form, the anger faded. The connection faded. That hurts worse than when the order was sacked worse than when Elissa left or Sy'wyn died. Used to think that everyone else was different, misguided. Now… I’m not sure. It could be me, but I’ve no way of telling.

    "You’ll tell Her for me._

    Keira leaned forward, putting her weight onto the man’s eyes, feeling them yield and burst in the darkness. She held him, listening until his breathing stopped.

    It would all end soon enough.


  • The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty.

    Keira sat on the hill. Watching, waiting, listening with grim contemplation to the howls drifting on the wind. She didn’t like feeling this way. Didn’t like hoping that something she had no control over might happen again. She looked to the dead deer she’d left on the grass as some bribe, some plea and listened to the howls, remembering.

    Aghila had taken her out to the Orc guards’ cave. To reassess her for membership of the scouts following her absence. Enjoyable as ever, to ghost along the caves. A second home, feeling Her around there, knowing that to extinguish the lights will bring darkness, silence, peace. She remembered the feel of flesh yielding under her hands and smiled.

    Keira listened to the talk of wolves in Jiyyd, remembering how magnificent Sy’wyn had been when he changed. More muscular, his brilliant green eyes shifted slightly, made more familiar, more desirable somehow by their harshness. The softness and care and regret that usually shadowed his face bled away to be replaces with instinct and necessity. Still they spoke of it as a curse, not understanding Fenmarel, not understanding wolves.

    She considered the wolves during a brief interlude when Nicahh was attacked. More of Ironaxe’s men had come for her and Keira had killed again. She listened to Hedia whine, watched the unflattering pout and creases in her skin as she related how unfair it was that Nicahh didn’t confide in her. She didn’t understand Fenmarel, didn’t understand wolves.

    Shalah had also killed one of Ironaxe’s that unwisely broke into her room. Keira smiled at the fine spray of gore that was all that remained of him. He hadn’t died easy before that either, from the brief glimpse of the body, the blood seeping under the door. Afterward, when Shalah was weak, Keira had gone to find fresh blood for her. Hospitality for a guest, food for a pack, expected service. Hedia hadn’t understood that, either. Keira watched her mewl and whine, begging that she check on one of the people that offered their blood in that service. Their choice, thought Keira, why should Hedia question that?

    They’d come to the Sisterhood afterwards. Hedia vainly trying to get a description of what Shalah had done with another silent Sharessan, jealousy tainting her voice and stance. She saw the dogs come over, a wolf with them, and smiled. People were ever weak, confusing, muddled and inconsistent. The dogs back at the order had been loyal, devoted, trained. Even the wolves of the high pass had worked well to feed each other, keep the pack in times of hardship. Whether thy understood, or not… they worked as one, for the good of the pack, not themselves, their actions combining to something greater. Like the Order. Like the Sisterhood.

    Keira crouched among the dogs, wrestling and cuffing them playfully. Felt them licking bits of the dead henchman from her clothes that she’d failed to clean in the stream. Nothing happened. The wolf approached, licked her nose as she watched it. There was still no change. She could hear Hedia and the others discussing whether these were those wolves or not and remembered a koan about dogs and spiritual nature. Do they have it? Wu!

    There. A tingle, something felt like it shifted in the back of her head. Keira nodded slightly and grabbed the wolf gently, looking into its eyes and licking its nose in return. The other dogs still happy leaping around her, drooling and licking. She closed her eyes, trying to reach a sense of calm and freedom to accept the world, feeling fur under her fingers. Feeling something surge up from the tingle in the back of her head and wash over her. Feeling her joints crackle and shift.

    The wolf opened her eyes and looked over her pack. One of them bowled her over happily and she rolled with it and back to her feet. She looked around, a small part appreciating the stability of four feet. The world now displayed before her in shades of grey more literal than moral. Perhaps the colors she was used to were some fabrication of perception, and this was real. Interesting. Yet there were colors as well, a faint red odor from Hedia, mingled arousal and worry and jealousy. The rainbow of sensation from her pack, who they were, where they’d been recently, what they’d eaten.

    She scratched her ear with her foot contemplatively. The sense of self that had always niggled unhelpfully and deceptively at her thoughts had faded to the merest background hum. The world lay before her, a new perspective, perhaps a purer one with fewer judgements. The wolf heard them talking about how to turn someone back, considered for a moment before deciding it might be relevant. She barked once briefly and ran, leaping the fence of the Sisterhood with as much ease as she had previously, revelling in the way her feet flowed over the ground. More fluid than the unstable falling she remembered of having fewer feet.

    The wolf howled, overlooking the long road outside Jiyyd. Again the people unsettlingly followed her pack. They clanked, smelling brown and unhealthy around their armor, talking unnecessarily loudly. She licked the other wolf absently and tried to keep an ear on the strains of conversation. Still the talk of turning her back. A man spoke to her, in their tongue asking if she wanted to return. She sat on her haunches, cocked her head slightly and thought.

    The sense of her pack was like the times she’d shared communion with Sy’wyn. Not as deep, but still noticeably there. A sense of her pack around her, the feeling of belonging sweeping over and through her in ways that the order’s teachings had tried to describe without emotion. The wolf had a vague recollection that she should mate, be with another, for life. That connection an enhancement of the general bond amongst the pack. No questions, no qualification – they were pack. That was the truth they built on, not the isolation of self within the world. She tried to summon the concept of an abstract negative and failed. Negation makes no sense without a statement of what it negates. She bunched her legs beneath her to run.

    ‘Not turn back’

    The wolf stared at the moon and howled joyously. She’d run for what seemed like forever and was tired, in a good way. Still enough to hunt. Not hungry yet. She padded down from the hill and into the trees, the dark smell of the hobgoblins overlaying the ground like lines on a map where they patrolled and sheltered from the rain under the trees.

    The pain ripped through her like jagged barbs. Something was wrong, the pack was hurt, broken. Feelings of warmth and comfort replaced briefly by abject terror and rage before only emptiness was left. No trace of the melange of sensations that made up her perception of the missing pack members. She started to head north at an easy lope, teeth bared, a low growl mounting in her throat.

    Hedia and the others were standing around near the blackened bodies of the pack. Not all there. The wolf’s head swivelled, trying to work out who killed them. No blood smell, just a sharper tang to the air mingled with the sweeter smells of hot meat and burnt things. One of the druids chants and she runs towards him silently before something sweeps her feet from under her and Hedia lands on her, in her armor.

    She wriggles and struggles, trying vainly to snap at Hedia despite the firm grip on the scruff of her neck. Some mist hangs in the air around them and clarity washes over her. Mustn’t look mad. Mustn’t look possessed. This is right. She focuses, calms herself and looks into the hooded man’s dark eyes with her own pale ones. Her neck extends, baring her throat, trying to convey the sense of ‘No’ with related small whines. Her bones crackle and shift, shoulders broadening, gaining weight. Her skull shifts and re-forms painfully, her teeth shrinking, her tongue becoming more numb, less useful.

    Keira feels the various hands upon her let go and she stands. The rage and impotence and sudden blunting of sensation sweep through her, cutting ties, neutering and blinding her. A nagging feeling of phantom limbs and the incomplete view of the people before her wash against her thoughts. Just shapes and muted colours. The negative space where the background of the trees meets the outline of the men and women nearby. She can feel herself angry still. She hasn’t been this angry, ever. The training has always been about control over this sort of instinct, yet it seems so right to leap on the hooded man, take his eyes first with a snake strike, sweep his legs, hit him until he doesn’t move. Maybe hit him a bit more after that.

    She’s so angry she doesn’t remember what she said, focuses on walking away. It’s not right to kill people with that sort of audience. So she walks south, painfully aware that she doesn’t know where her pack are anymore. They didn't understand. They never understand.

    It had been a gift and a valuable one. They spoke truth when they said you didn’t appreciate something until you had lost it. Maybe it was better this way, in Her service. She savoured the memory, deciding to stay a while longer in case the wolf returned.

    Keira sat on the hill, watching, waiting.

    ((Thanks to Lazarus DM and all the do-gooding, self-righteous, arrogant PCs that think that it’s okay to do whatever you feel is best regardless of the stated views of those involved. I hope those PCs all have their families ripped from them… 🙂 ))


  • My pleasure. Thank you for the greatly enjoyable description of the events. Very good writing indeed.


  • The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
    Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it…

    Keira thought for a moment before answering the hooded man. ‘Why?’
    He responded eloquently and wisely, as she would have expected. An observation based on past experience, seemingly out of place with current perception. For a human, he was attractive in that way. Sensible, directed, committed. Not for her though.

    She heard the scuff of footfalls approaching - rapid, short stride length, likely one of the children. She heard Tommy ask if they could deal with a ghost. Frowning, Keira remembered her most recent experience of the ghouls on the plains. Dragging herself clear of someone’s overzealous lightning. The ghouls were unerring in their pursuit, not put off by invisibility, or stamina. Untiring. Magnificent in some ways, Intriguing to think that the ghouls had a concept of what they left behind to embrace undeath. And fools like Raryldor give it up to return to mundane flesh.

    Zanetar nodded to Tommy and rose to go see Sorien about the ghost. After a moment, she followed. Watching from the shadows as they discussed the action. A spirit of some sort Sorien claimed meant him harm, lairing in the Gypsy Camp. He wanted it destroyed but was unaware of its strength, unable to perform the action himself. Keira listened as Zanetar agreed to send someone down.

    She talked with Sorien, asking more about the ghost with little success, resolving to go and look for it and gauge its strength. Heard the door bang as Percy entered, manner confident, armor dark. His father’s child much more than his Mother’s. Keira sighed slightly, knowing she’d have to save Percy if things went badly. He’d grown so quickly…

    The walk to the camp was pleasantly silent. Keira listened for their feet crunching in the snow, watched Percy kill the few fishmen that tried to attack them in the caves. He fought well, blows falling where they should, but still lacked something. Discipline? Was he too arrogant, too sure of himself?

    The Camp was near empty. Keira looked around as they circled the fires, checked the South pass and returned to find Lilin, Star and Tiggles. She smiled, acknowledging her Sisters. The first question about the spirit drew an odd reaction from them. Keira watched their posture shift, felt Percy bristle next to her. She knew it wouldn’t work this way. They hate him, they want rid of him. No matter why he comes. She knew that sort of revulsion, knew it couldn’t be reasoned with.

    Keira stepped away from Percy, distancing herself from his protestations, watching for others. Heard Star claim that the spirits were sacred, even as she was tensing her bow. She fights well, hides well. Very hard to guard against, so little point in trying. Percy was still arguing that they were here to kill a killer, kept looking to her for support that wasn’t there. Then she saw the boy, by the fire. He had just... appeared there. She smiled and moved to sit at the fires, not too close deliberately offering her back to Star and the others arguing. The gypsies claiming that the killing of anything in their protection was a blood-debt that all Rom would seek payment on. The usual lies. Too many had been given up in the past for expediency to Peltarch and other places.

    Keira watched the boy and smiled. Children were refreshingly open to deal with. Much more tolerant, much more accepting, much more trusting. She heard him talk of his mother and her death, how she’d eaten some berries. How he was looking for a man to help. Keira knew Sorien sold berries. She knew Sorien’s berries cured wounds. Likely this boy was related, maybe the ghost in child form. Maybe his mother another of the ghouls, not knowing she’d turned. A tragic accident.

    Percy shouted ‘Why do I have to go? She’s here to kill the boy too!’.

    Keira frowned slightly at the fire for a moment, imagining Star’s gaze moving to her. Hearing the bow tighten, half-drawn. She smiled at the boy and softly reassured him that she wasn’t here to kill him. Lies? No. She didn’t lie often. She wasn’t good at lying. The Sisters knew that. Hopefully it would be enough doubt to hold Star, for a moment. Keira waits, quietly.

    Percy rounds on the boy, asking about Sorien, driving him beautifully. Perhaps he has some talent after all. A final outburst, demanding that the boy declare he means Sorien no harm, and the good folk of the camp intervene. Keira watches the boy placidly, observing the blood-red tears streaking his face and coloring his eyes. Just a child. Just a good spirit, sacred to the camp. She hears Percy stomp off, declaring her an idiot. People play emotion best when they believe it, better he thinks her weak and ineffectual.

    Keira watches them comfort the boy, asking again about his mother and berries. The child screams more agitated when Sorien’s name is mentioned. It cries out to know where he is, and Star tells it. This bleeding travesty of something that once might have lived, this monster that calls for vengeance against an act none of them witnessed. Keira smiles, watching the features contort, becoming something dark, indistinct with ragged smoky claws. She hears Star tell it how to get into the caves, across the chasm and into Oscura.

    The apparition screamed off towards the Nars pass.

    Keira watches the fire Hearing Star relax slightly, she stands and looks round at the gathered Gypsies. She smiles at her Sisters and says that she ought to warn Sorien. Keira is disappointed to hear Lilin proclaim that Sorien’s getting what he deserves – for killing the boy’s mother. She knows nothing beyond her perception but she thinks she knows Truth. Keira is thankful again that her Goddess doesn’t burden her with the blinkers of certainty. She sighs and heads off to Oscura at an easy jog.

    Keira quickens her pace once through the gates, sprinting through Oscura’s twisted streets, past the Nibenese mosaics. She can hear an unnatural screeching from the pit and Percy’s labored breathing. The boy is bleeding heavily from many wounds as the ragged claws of smoke lick out again. Sorien lies in the doorway of the Odds, grievously hurt. No hesitation. Thought to action.

    She spins past Percy, crimson gloved hands lashing out in claws of her own. A feint and a sweep show that it’s insubstantial enough that it can’t be tripped. How do you fight a ghost? It fades further, blurring indistinctly at the edges, shifting so it’s hardly there at all. Hardly there except for the blades of ragged shadow cutting into her. Keira closes, demanding its attention, quietly ordering Percy to back off and tend Sorien.

    She hopes he’ll obey rather than embark on a childish argument over who is in charge, but only briefly. Eris, the vengeful spirit, is not restful or happy. She feels another claw slash at her forehead and swipes back. Her crimson robes darker as she fights to end the problem her Sisters have forced her to fight alone with their petty judgements. Fight close, crowd, distract. Her hands close together on parts of the spirit solid enough to wound her and twists. A good trade. Something worked, there. Something tore in its fabric. The wound to her arm is painful, but not fatal. The pain tells us we’re alive, warns us of damage, informs us of things we can choose to endure, if required to.

    Fighting, like anything, is best performed with a calm heart. Wild emotion can provide power, but power misdirected is power misused. When the hawk breaks the body of its prey it is not because of strength, it is because of timing. Precision, not power, is the goal of training.

    The spirit screams that we should die, then pleads that it should live. Then it fades and is gone. Keira straightens out of the monkey crouch and turns to see Sorien beginning to stir under Percy’s ministration. So hard to protect people.

    ((Thanks to DM Nightfall for the spiritual experience, and the ever-welcoming Gypsy Camp))


  • Happiness isn't a thing in itself–it's only a contrast with something that isn't pleasant.

    Keira sat on the bench, dark robes pooled around her, waiting for the man to regain consciousness. The only sounds in the room, the crackling of the fire burning low and the harsh, choked breathing of the man’s family lying bound on the floor. His eyelids fluttered and Keira started to unpack some tools from the sack.

    ‘Wha? who?’ The first words are so rarely useful. Keira adjusted the wick of the lantern, illuminating the room as the man started to struggle against the ropes holding him to the chair. She tapped his leg gently with a knife to get his attention and indicated the room with a slow sweep of the blade. His wife and two children, bound, conscious and unharmed. Their eyes were wide still with fear and uncertainty, voices stilled with cloth. The bodyguard, loyal to the last, lay just outside the doorway unmoving.

    His gaze returned to Keira, her usually expressionless face concealed with a mask, hair hidden by the hood of the robe. She nodded slightly and held out a brief note for the man to read by lamplight.

    @54334a3579:

    My dear Julius,
    No formalities are needed, no apologies, no bargaining or agreement will be entered into. You have wronged us. You are regrettably still useful to us, so you will wake tomorrow morning alive and unharmed and prepared to resume your work with the diligence and loyalty that has been unfortunately lacking recently.

    To encourage this change of heart, we have commissioned some expert help. There is no-one before you, only an instrument of our will. Such loyalty is a valuable commodity, you might learn something tonight. One of your children will assist in your education, it is too obvious to assume that your wife would agree to anything to save her offspring. All you need say is which child is forfeit to your previous indiscretion. Any prevarication or delay will result in regrettable collateral discomfort to your wife, without actually serving any purpose to divert our instrument’s instructions.

    Of course we can find you if you run. Much more importantly, we can find your family.

    Keira watched the man’s eyes widen, watched his face fall, watched his gaze flicker briefly to his wife and children. We bring troubles upon ourselves. It was a shame that she wouldn’t be here to hear the man explain to his wife how or why he’d made his decision. A stronger man would accept the situation, choose a path and follow it. All too often there was denial, hope, all manner of emotion clouding what should be simple.

    She listened to the man take a few breaths before starting upon the traditional declarations that he would suffer in place of his children. He cried and begged and pleaded, increasingly louder as she dragged his wife over in front of him by her ankles. Keira smiled, beneath her mask.


  • It is the law of humanity that we must know good through evil. No great principle ever triumphed but through much evil. No one ever progressed to greatness and goodness but through great mistakes.

    Keira sat alone in the darkness, thinking about loyalty and devotion. What Corde asked would be easy to smile and lie for, but that would not be a good lie. With devotion, with loyalty, honesty was paramount. It was bad enough that her allegiances could pull in different directions. Small comfort that they had not.

    So she sits, alone in the darkness, thinking of her faith and where it’s led her. Loviatar’s priests have been even less frequent in the area. Certainly the ones she’s met have shown little interest in her. It was a useful reminder of the truth, that we are alone in the world, but not one that seemed unique to the Maiden of Pain. Noria had told her that Loviatar had sought Shar’s protection after Bane’s death. Amaliel had taught her sign language, had helped to imprison Elor. Alethra had… just always been constant. Yu was a beacon of calm, an example of how solitude and peace could exist without concern. Yu demonstrated that almost all was possible, if you chose to act, chose to disregard the paths of your past. Nyda… Nyda had turned from Loviatar towards the half-remembered light of her childhood. She wasn’t pure, wasn’t the glow of tolerance that the libraries stored of Selune’s light. None of this was about their path, their choice. The Sharrans understood loss, revenge, bitterness – all useful tools. More importantly they understood silence, the perfection of nothingness.

    Keira sits and prays, aware of her arrogance and self-importance in asking for a sign. Fearful that maybe, just maybe, a God will notice her. It’s not good to be noticed. Even so, it’s not desperation or need that drives her. She just wants some family to be comfortable with, for a while. Just wants a sign that she’s wanted in return.

    Jogging easily along the road to the Sisterhood. Life the same as always. Nothing changes very much in the world. We change. We change how we perceive things. Keira hears a cry, nearer the house, rounds the trees to see an elf and a larger hobgoblin with a scythe. She motions Sparky to stay and watches the fight, letting the hobgoblin land a couple of telling blows on the weaker elf before breaking its neck from behind.

    Keira hears the rustle of cloth and turns from the elf’s grateful thanks to Yu Shei. She bows, fist in palm and Keira nods curtly in return. She thinks Yu Shei would likely disapprove of Shar and Her followers, decides not to ask outright her opinions. The elf stumbles towards Jiyyd. Keira hears Yu telling her she did a good thing, saving the man, and shakes her head. Maybe she doesn’t understand. Maybe Yu has learned too much from Master Woo Fen, who places so much store in fairness and challenge. Maybe she has learned more than Keira, in her time here. She takes a deep breath, lets it out evenly and nods to Yu Shei’s suggestion that they scout the orc lands. Someone will certainly get hurt, and they’ll likely make no impression on the orc forces.

    Good to work with someone who can move quietly. Good to feel that you’re matched, like two hands reaching out for the same (throat) cup. The bolder orcs notice a flash of Yu’s red robes and give chase, falling quickly to their combined strength. Then they see the mage, not quite alone with a single inexperienced bodyguard. Maybe gathering herbs or some other component. As she charges, Keira feels it start to slip. Feels the slight buzz that heralds a close fight, feels the warning that now is the prudent time to run.

    She feels her foot turn on a loose rock, hears the scrape it makes, sees the mage start to turn while she’s still thirty feet away. Keira rolls under the bodyguard’s club and comes up, still heading for the mage, very aware of his chanting. Closer now, but not close enough when the slick black tentacles erupt from the ground and thrash about to grab and burn. The pain is as fresh as ever. The training that would normally allow her to meditate over its rhythms now helps her to consider those warnings as abstract, rather than imperatives. The training allows her hands, her body, her mind to work unencumbered by the pain.

    The mage blurs and near disappears as Keira’s foot sweeps around to kick the bodyguard. Harder now for her blows to find him. She’s vaguely aware of Yu Shei loosing arrows into the orc while keeping watch on the nearby plains. Keira starts to tumble around the mage, to get clear of the tentacles as the last syllables of his spell die on his lips. One lunge and then… it’s all calm.

    Keira notices with clarity the unnatural angle she’s fallen at. Her momentum carried her clear of most of the tentacles, only rarely does the one at the edge lash acidic slime at her ankle. She hears the mage continue to chant in their guttural tongue, but can’t see him. All she sees is the grass of the plains, the ground before her paralyzed eyes. She hears the hiss and bubble of a jet of acid striking her back. She feels it burn past the meagre protection the ring provides against such attack. There are no fair fights.

    She knows that she can maybe take another 2 bolts like that, especially as it continues to burn dully in her acid-soaked robes. She would have smiled, feeling the thud of the shod staff as it broke her ribs, but was constrained in silent contemplation of the failure of her body. ‘Only those blows that can be avoided.’ That’s what Loviatar teaches. Not to sit and accept a beating you don’t need to. She teaches that we should mete out pain and punishment to those who deserve it.

    The dull burn of acid washes over her back again, the difference in sound and smell as the splash catches her hair is noticeable. Keira is only considering this in passing. She is remembering the features of the plains, tensing frozen muscles against the time when the possibility of action returns. She will die. We all die. When we die, we die alone, for no death is alike in much the way that no two paths are alike. She is calm, considering this, and then she is scared, listening to the battle behind her.

    Keira can hear the quiet grunts and occasional Ki-shouts of Yu Shei. She feels no further attacks from the mage against her, but is very weak. Still paralysed, but now with the faint hope of survival to concern her. To act or not when it makes no difference is easy. To accept that you’re not in control is easy. To act, when the consequence will make a difference, that is much harder. But the action is still the same. Roll clear, drink the invisibility potion, move again.

    It sounds like Yu is not doing well. Sounds like few of her blows are landing on the blurred orc mage. Whipsounds and smell of burnt flesh probably means the mage has summoned more tentacles. Keira feels the paralysis lift and rolls smoothly over her shoulders, hands already going to her beltpouch. She drinks the potion and limps carefully to the cover of a tree. Watches her burn-spotted hands root through her potion box even as she directs her body to heal faster.

    She drinks a potion, looks over to the fight. The mage has taken a few good blows but still fights, striking soundly with the staff. His blurring outline is still too indistinct for Yu to strike when he chants again. Keira watches the acid sear through the bright robe of Woo Fen, watches Yu waver but still stand. Keira drinks again, testing her damaged legs for use in a fight. She takes the holy knife and twists it in her wounds, trusting that the Maiden will accept her recent suffering as devotion enough, watching them heal and skin reform by Her mercy.

    She hears a cry from Yu Shei and looks up. The mage stands, badly wounded and leaning on his staff. Yu Shei lies at his feet, twitching faintly but still breathing. Keira tests her injured leg silently and reaches for another potion. She watches the mage get his breath back. Sees him howl in exultation to the plains and bring his staff down on Yu Shei’s head. She hears the indistinct crackle of a skull fracture, quieter than ribs or limbs. So hard to protect people. Easier to avenge them.

    Invisibly Keira limps towards the Mage.

    She looks down at the bodies. The two orcs badly beaten and fallen near Yu’s acid-ravaged corpse. Keira watches them and thinks. Yu Shei saved her life. Her distraction of the mage allowed the hold spell to end. She risked her life, to save another. She should have run. Keira hoists the body and the pack onto her shoulders, drinks another invisibility potion and walks off the plains.

    She walks.

    She Thinks.

    This is Yu Shei. This is one of the most prominent Selunites in the area. Corde himself had spoken of her. The gnome that Shar herself had blinded, had told Yu Shei the prophecy. Told her of the One and the Other, and how the Hands of Selune would stand alone against that Other. The gnome had given Yu Shei the gloves - the gloves that were consecrated to the Moonmaiden. All this that was dear to Selune had fallen at her feet. Keira knows what Shar would want her to do. How can that not be a sign? Keira smiles, watching her hands wrap the body in a blanket.

    It’s dark when she delivers the body and the gloves to the Temple of the Caverns.

  • D

    (Very, very well written.)


  • An undeviating path of self-examination does not necessarily lead to a mountain of self-knowledge.
    I stumble toward my grave confused and hurt and hungry.

    Keira watched her hands, cutting meat. Feeling the blade slice with the grain of the muscle. Removing tendons, excising the gristle from near the joints. Good to work, good to prepare, good to practice. The knife just a tool, just a focus for will and action. Keira tasted the stew. Meat softer now, taking on the sweetness of the apples, companion to the wine and the onions and the rosemary.

    Good to help people. Good to be warm, good for those coming off the plains to find hot food waiting.

    The ghouls were dead. Put to the sword by Belade's zeal. Tracked to their lair by Star. So many ghouls, and yet still they charged into the cave. Keira watched Jert try to retreat, paralyzed, gagging by the ghoul's stench. Watched the ghoul lord swipe him down with its claws. Bored, Keira kicked again at her Ogre's throat as it tried to rise. It rose again, unbothered, before a flurry of other blows broke enough limbs to make it fall. Only one dead, to rescue another? The group advanced into the cells, looking for Melody.

    Found her, alive. Troubled by her imprisonment, clutching at a piece of meat. Time to leave, before others come. Belade whining about the meat, standing surrounded by ghoul corpses. Not caring who might return, not asking why they lived there, who created them, what was coming. Struggling to get her home to the house, watching her stare vacantly, watching her take bites of the flesh. Belade, seething, itching to find another foe. Anything she could slay in Sune's name, anything to give her a reason for being. How can she give herself so unquestioningly to such horror?

    All a matter of time. Melody sick, getting sicker. Keira fed her friend, watching the glazed yellow eyes track the bloody meat as she offered it. Her skin greyer now, strong hands become ragged claws. Still needs time for a cure, still need to feed her so she's not too weak. They hadn't been there to protect her. So hard to protect people. Much easier to avenge. Easier to heal than prevent infection, unless you know what's coming. She wouldn't eat deer anymore. Melody needed something… different. Nyda still researching a cure for the fever. Belade thankfully dispatched to make silverdust, her repeated demands that she be allowed to put Melody to rest if the cure failed were an irritation. If it looks like Melody, if it can come back and be Melody... it still is, in some way. Put to rest was such a weak way to say kill, end, destroy. Take what remains of herself and send it to her god. Very easy to justify killing, when you believe hard. Very easy when you believe it's right.

    _Keira, shrouded in the evening twilight. Watching the road as a lone man wandered up. Unfortunate that the hobgoblins had learned to stay away from the Sisterhood over the past week. Always consequences for our actions. Animal meat not good enough anymore. She padded out towards him, glad that he was a stranger. Keira relished the surprise in his eyes, watching it turn to relief as he realised it wasn't an orc, wasn't a bandit, just a slightly built elf, probably from the town he was approaching. She smiled encouragingly, letting him draw breath to speak, before stabbing her fingers into his unguarded throat. She stepped closer to hold him as he died, watching his eyes.

    Keira watched his eyes dull, breath rasping finally out of his chest. She let the body fall, checked again for watchers before rolling it into a blanket and taking it away. Easy to kill when you believe it's right. Much harder to realise you kill through will, through action, through choice. See a stranger, know that their death may keep someone you know from dying. Just a choice, an effort of will, an action.

    Keira watched her hands, cutting meat. Need to bone it. Need to dice it, make it unrecognisable. Wolves will do the rest. If body's found in time, likely thieves will have stripped it. The heap of flesh, bloody, wrapped in a skin. Keira dragged the body out to the plains below the hill, hearing the howls, knowing they'd come. Druids would be happy. Not wasting the kill, leaving it for the other animals._

    Keira bought holy water by the case from Vroka, checking off the list Nyda had written. Noting the absence of food for Melody. Keira smiled at the understanding between them. Keira watching Pilth and Lilin thrown around by the crazed strength of the ghoul. Hardly recognizable anymore, her red hair gone. Eyes a baleful yellow, skin grey and mottled. Not going well. Keira watched Pilth flailing in her armor in a tub, wondering if she'd drown. Remembered Pilth chewing lumps out of her arm. Keira smiled at the symmetries and moved towards the bath.

    Splashing, weaker now. Keira watched her hands holding the ghoul under the water. Heard the splashing getting fainter from Pilth's tub. Watched Nyda incanting a blessing with greater fervour as she poured holy water over what had been Melody. How many lives to save one you want to save? As many as it takes. That's the difference between will and weakness. Willingness to act, willingness not to act despite the consequences.

    Silence. The water black and still. They hauled the thing that had been Melody out, attempting another curative blessing. It didn't burn. Damp clanking as Pilth managed to haul herself over the side eventually. All done, just the ends to tidy up. Keira padded quietly back to the kitchens, gathering the knives and bowls used to prepare the food. Noticing some flesh left over, Keira thought for a moment before smiling.

    Keira tasted the stew. Meat softer now, taking on the sweetness of the apples, companion to the wine and the onions and the rosemary.

    Good to help the people of Jiyyd, hungry so often. Good to be warm, good for those coming off the plains to find hot food waiting.

    ((Thanks to Salsadoom? for a fun time playing with ghouls))


  • Now you're some back, too bad you're still the same
    A blackened circle of pain is all you are. When will you realise that it's endless.

    Stupid. Careless. All this time, all these years and nothing much changes. Faster, yes. Stronger, yes. All as nothing, bound and weighted by the sluggish lead of thought. Should have seen. Should have heard. Should have run. But no. Stood there, throwing yourself into the fountains of acid off the mages body. Ilmater would have been proud, you messed up victim. What did it serve?

    Nothing.

    Worse than that. You didn't think. If you'd thought, it would be better. Not much, since you were killing yourself without any purpose. Should have thought. Should have chosen to die, rather than flinging yourself onto the dwarf attacking Sy'wyn. He wasn't dying. He wasn't even badly hurt. Even if he was, you'd have made no difference. Useless elf. You learn nothing.

    Nothing

    Worse than that. You're learning the wrong things. Lessons of pain aren't random. They aren't impossible. They're there to help you. There to be considered, to be reasoned. In short, to be avoided, but if they can't they're to be understood. You're missing it all. Why are you here? Who are you? How was dying senselessly going to help? No. You're running out of time. One day they won't bring you back because they'll have worked out how useless you are. Once you're worth nothing to them, they won't suffer you around.

    Got to get yourself together. Work out why you're here. Die before you've served your purpose and you won't be welcome. Nobody wants that. Not even you deserve that. Tighten up. Watch what happens. Don't let it happen again, not enough time to learn like that.


  • No happy endings, just endings

    They don't understand. Not something to be cured, not something to be fixed. Not everything changes the way we want it to. Not everything bad can be reversed. Life is pain. Meant to suffer, meant to endure. Meant to struggle and twitch and thrash before it all goes dark. They don't see that, they see it as glorious, beautiful, hope for something better. The hope does nothing except blind them. They are too close to see what is Truth. Step back from every light and it's revealed as a speck of grey in gathering darkness. A spasm, a flare and another is gone. All we are, all this is - fading.


  • Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all are guided.

    Did a good thing. Know it, felt it. Maybe this what they meant. No-one saw, no-one asked. Just me and the world.

    The woman was alone, creeping through the snows north of the ridge. Good, but not that good. Slight scuff against the snow. Brushed against branches. Uneven stride. Tired, maybe. Followed her, closing, watching. She wore Eastlander uniform. Odd. Thought we got them all. Advance, wait. She pauses. I cough, once. She freezes.

    Good to see expression change. Good to see it in her eyes. Been too long. She's scared. Say nothing. She says… 'I'm n-no-one!'. Rare to hear truth like that from a human that young. Maybe she doesn't mean it like that. Catch in her voice.

    Could have walked away, let her go. Could have accepted it made no difference. Could have let it be someone else's problem, if it came back to them. Knew it would be right to find out who she was, why? What she did here still. What the City needs to know but can't ask out loud.

    Nod. All is fine. Smile, she relaxes. Kick winds her, doubles her over. Close, arteries in the neck, hold and she slumps. Still quiet in the pass. Tie her, hands, feet. Not losing another for fear of carrying them. Not relying on guards, or defenders, or the legion. Pull spare robe over bound form and balance her over shoulders.

    She's coming round. Scared, struggling. Point out the reception she'd get from the Guardsmen at Watchtower. How many have lost friends to her people. She quiets. Respect people who can wait, silently for the right time. Respect people who act and succeed. She wriggles quietly. Feels like working her wrists under the robe. Feel it against my back.

    Stand over the cliff. Watching the stream in the valley below. Soon, she notices we're not walking. Notices where we stand. Long drop. Hard to keep hold of someone who wriggles. No-one knows I have her to miss her. She understands, it's not yet her time.

    Guards at the gate nod. Just another injured friend. People in the commons. No-one cares. No-one notices. Girl on shoulder quiet again, watching the cobbles of the city move past my feet. Put her in a cell. A quiet one. Thick door. Untie her. Watch, quietly. She's thin, sunken cheeked, dark round the eyes. Offer her food which she wolfs.

    She says she came back a couple weeks ago to find them all dead. Listen. Remember coming back, years ago to find my people dead. Think what might have happened if I'd died with them. Interesting. Not worth dwelling on might have beens. She says we killed them all. We did.

    Told her she was alone, in the city she called enemy. Reminded her what Defenders would do if they knew. Told her we could get her out again, in time, if she helped us. She bursts into tears. Didn't even need to touch her. All in her head. She sobs uncontrollably, rocking in the corner of the cell. Watch her for a while before making report.

    Feels good to do good. Maybe Paladins right about that.


  • Things do not change; we change.

    Time away worthwhile. Can watch them now with less attachment. Surely closer to Her for this clarity. Silence of temple restful. Feels safe. A good place to end. Good place to return to. Cracks more visible now. Chaos creeping in lines of red beneath their faces. They smile and don't feel it. Maybe they smile because they can't feel it.

    Watched hope in faces of younger orphans. Too young to understand. Older children show varying aptitude. Time will show them truth of Her teachings. People asking me to do things again. Reflection of me on world. Feels good. More honest now. They understand will and choice. No right. No wrong. Will is everything.


  • It’s not easy to find happiness in ourselves and it’s not possible to find it elsewhere.

    Keira worked her way through a kata down in the training room under the clouded eyes of the disrespectful and failed students. Thinking about paths and choices, turning and snap-kicking at the adjacent punchbag before returning her focus and blows to the first one again. Sensations from the ache in her thighs and back were noted and compared with the expected rigours of the routine. Sy’wyn had been regrettably gentle with her, she reflected, not displaying quite the same fire or focus as he had a while ago under the Ferret when he'd beaten her unconscious.

    She finished the kata, spinning gracefully to the wary panther stance before straightening and bowing slightly to the punchbags. Wiping her face with a cloth, remembering the feel of his hands on her, the feel of his fists on her, and the glint in his eyes. She noticed herself smiling again, for no reason, and composed herself for more sober contemplation. He’d told her more about why he claimed to find her attractive. It was almost believable. Her earlier thoughts of how attractiveness was mostly a reflection seemed to hold, for now. Maybe he really did like her but that was becoming harder to determine and so less worthy of consideration.

    He’d said he was arranging a house; A new home for himself to justify the next century of bitterness and isolation when it was inevitably destroyed. She thought for a moment about the calmness he projected, the fascination with the way she thought of things. Pulling back to a longer view to face her fears of the future and rejection.
    Leave the order; Choose a new patron; Love Sy’wyn; Raise little elves.
    It would be belonging to someone, and that was attractive. She smiled, knowing he’d hate that. He’d always doubt her motivation, feel that she’d done it to please him. It’d be hard for him to refuse, if presented right. He’d have to accept her and in time he’d hate himself for it. It wouldn’t even need a crystal or a collar for him to think he’d taken her will away.

    For now, all she had to do was bring him closer. Nicahh and Denna and Eowiel all said he was suitable for her, though she was very aware that their criteria were different. They could probably provide some useful practical advice for the future. Something to relax him, she thought, remembering a slight furrow in his brow during moments of particular concentration. Perhaps the fight training would help. She sighed, remembering the cell she’d shared with the other novices. They’d started to respect her once she’d grown enough to fight back. Nothing builds familiarity and ease like beating people bloody and then meditating on it together.

    Amy. It was a similar plan to reflect appropriate emotion back to her, encourage continued commitment and feelings. Keira smiled, contemplating Amy’s foolishness and trust. It would have to be repaid with an appropriate lesson, eventually. Until then, there were other plans for her. Maybe she could even help with Sy’wyn, considering the number of menfolk she’d lain with. Surely there’d be some sort of common techniques to pass on. That would be good to learn. He seemed to approve when she learned new things.

    Keira returned to her bunk and drifted into reverie, thinking of the smell of his skin and the way his eyes flashed green in candlelight.


  • To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love.

    ‘It was a test. To see how I’d react?’

    Keira watched as his face fell, the smile fading from his lips and eyes. He turned and walked away across the square towards the gate. His last words, that not everything was a test, carried on the wind. She watched him walk out into the snows of the pass, frowning slightly. She could leave, now. That would be best, for both of them. In time he’d realise it was her fault, not his. In time he’d work out that she couldn’t be relied on, couldn’t be one of the carefree dancing forest elves. Better for her too. At times his faith was infectious, almost letting her think he did value her. Of course he couldn’t, that would be another of the pretty lies, but sometimes it would have been easy to let it get to her.

    Yes. Better for them to be apart. He couldn’t really want her, and it would be wrong for her to believe he did. Keira watched the gates and sighed, contemplating what she was losing. She thought of the collars and his reaction to them, his reaction to the crystals and their servants. That loss of self was so wrong to him…

    Without love, we suffer. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer.

    Bring it back to doubt. Unlikely as it was, could he want her? Scarred, insignificant, scared, inadequate, tainted and lost. Why would he find that attractive? What does he see in someone drifting, out of place, struggling to find some meaning in their actions, when every day the futility of them is thrust back by the world. We can’t protect the things we value, only avenge them… He was old, he’d said that. She was young, he’d said that too. He wants to protect her? Heal her from the bitterness and loss he lives with? Keira frowned. Maybe he sees parts of himself reflected.

    He watched her sometimes, smiling. Were those the eyes and smiles of a proud teacher? Is there something more? He said he wanted her. He said it wasn’t a test. Of course he said it wasn’t a test. Action becomes habit becomes character. Keira glared indiscriminately over the square for a moment calming herself. He risks much, trying to manipulate her like this. With encouragement, with reinforcement, he might begin to believe it himself. His plan for her, built on convincing her she mattered to him before crushing that carefully built hope. He was skilled. The looks, the words, the willingness to walk away when apparently rejected to encourage her to follow… Very skilful, except that she knew what he was doing.

    Know your enemy, know yourself and in a thousand battles you will not be defeated

    Follow his lead, draw him in a circle of his own momentum. Show him a weakness, show him the need he wants to foster. Show him the hope that he wishes to crush. Make him believe and then the opportunity will present itself. Precision. Timing. Keira pauses, remembering the Order, remembering the ways she’d been hurt, remembering the rhythm, and remembering the use of contrast. What could he do that was worse than that? She took a breath and let it out evenly. Fear should not drive us, it should only inform us of danger. We choose to act. She knew he’d hurt her, with acceptance of that; the fear was easier to manage. She knew he’d touch her and with acceptance the fear was easier to manage. For anything else, her strength would have to be enough.

    Keira smiled and set out at a jog, following the footsteps in the snow towards the Gypsy Camp.