3. Meditations on Pain - Keira's perception

Meditations on Pain - Keira's perception


  • There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against power and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams

    Keira at the defences, huddled in the shadow of the gates watching Lyte. The orcs had been tentative, probing at the gates with the uncertain hesitation of a cub. Something was wrong. It was too quiet.

    The guard changes and people come, people go. Keira stays, listening. The scent of the new arrivals roils towards her like smoke, two of them have been drinking, not much, just a little courage before the walls. Ale. Ale and cider. The man belches, scratches himself, turns to joke with the others. Mm. Fresh meat in the stew today. That’s not all, there’s sweat, fear, the usual dirt and old blood. And… something else, like threads of dark purple curling at the edges of her mind.

    Keira stands, stretches, looks casually over the compound between the gates in a slow sweep. The tall woman in shiny armor, talking to Lyte, asking about the day. Keira stretches again, heads towards them and the gates. She sniffs slightly, uncomfortably aware of the old blood on her, too. Time to patrol briefly, check to see if the orcs are mustering. The tall woman speaks and Lyte nods.

    ’Selune watch us all’

    The woods overlooking the plains are thick but dry, stray fireballs have already taken scouts from both sides. Keira’s almost invisible, hair shrouded in her hood, face striped with the local mud and ash. Another mask. Darkness where there’s light over the nose, chin, cheekbones, forehead. A face become something odd, blank, losing definition. She’s still, because when we move, we move like people, and that’s noticed. She’s filthy, covered in the soot and muck of the earth, so that she smells more like the quiet woods. Not that it would fool her.

    Keira watches. Keira listens. Faint footsteps 30 yards away, behind. Gently, by inches, she lifts the small mirror to look behind her. Tilting, looking deeper to where it points, hands careful so shield it from the sides. The Selunite. Stamping through the woods, like a dwarf. She stops, helm tilting as she looks at the mirror, looks at Keira. The whisper in her mind is like a caress.

    ‘Go to Norwick, the south. I want you there. Now.

    The Selunite wanders west and rejoins the others in the clearing, resumes some conversation. Keira’s already moving, low crawl for several yards to get back from the treeline, then up into a crouched run. Nothing to report at the gates, orcs quiet for now. Usual archers and caster lookouts on the hill overlooking the makeshift barricades. Lucidious arrives, several of the Norwick guards with him. It was too quiet.

    Late afternoon in Norwick. Keira nodded to Praeth, checked what spoils he’d been sold today. Not much. Maybe the woods were quiet. Too many bugbears and goblins at Jiyyd, perhaps. She tilts her head, catching sound of horns from the East. Jiyyd’s horns. A couple of chancing mercenaries at the north gate grab their gear and leave at a run, the chance of a lucrative escort to Peltarch forgotten. Keira sniffs the air. Fresh boar at the Boarshead. Likely Barle had sent some up to Drudo, if it had been a good hunt. The Rawlins was food on legs, if you had the wit to hunt. Smell of lamp oil and cheap tallow candles. The stallholders of the market lighting lanterns under the tarpaulins, in case of rain. Another quiet evening.

    Keira walks southwards, past the Crafthall, watching the ‘prentices leave and head around to the ‘head for a drink after work. The compound with the barracks and healers has the regular couple of guards. Nothing unusual there. She rolled her shoulders and turned a slow circle, taking in the square. The older women shooing their children off home for bed. A travelling bard from the Vast, by the cut of his cloak, starting to pick out a tune on his lute to the amusement of the folks gathered outside the Boarshead. Misty delivers some drinks, turns and looks at Keira before heading back inside, her secret still safe. It’s quiet.

    She walks south in the dying light, the hulks of the defences still being built are quiet as the workers that need light have stopped for the day. The dwarves won’t arrive for a couple of hours. Keira smiles to the guards on the gate. Reynald was tubby, despite all the training, a fondness for ale and rich food straining his Militia wages and straining the cut of his tunic worse. Joffrey was just fifteen when she’d joined the militia, years ago, before the Crystals. Now he had but three teeth left in his head and was losing his hair. It would be a foolish recruit or passing elf, to mock him for that, though. Good men. The woods are quiet as Keira watches from the platform. It was too quiet.

    Keira frowns, listening, but there’s nothing on the wind. The secret is untold. She takes a deep breath, lets it out evenly and walks to the gates, pausing a moment as Joffrey exchanges what might be a pleasantry. Laughter drifts south from the town. It’s followed by a cheer as the bard launches into the familiar strains of ‘Tarien’s Reel’, a local favourite almost guaranteed to give the bard singing it a warm bed for the night. The light almost gone, she opens the south gates and steps outside. It was too quiet.

    The shadows of the trees blurring as deeper darkness under the clouded night. A dark moon, in any case. Joffrey sticks his head around the open gate to watch her, staring towards the lake, still. The birds aren’t singing, but it’s evening. No deer by the gates, and usually some of them are too stupid to know better, cosseted by generations of druids. Barle had had fresh meat, so hunters had been through. That’s why there’s no deer. Keira swept the lakeshore with her gaze, trying to feel something. It was too quiet.

    The arrow meant for her throat whips through her hood instead. Her hand that deflected it still moving aside as her eyes refocus and make sense of the darkness near the trees, the new defences. Things uncoil silently and begin to move. There is a moment of clarity, a moment of realization as her eyes meet the shapes in the darkness. She can hear Joffrey and Reynald start to move, to step into the gateway. An arrow whips past her, then another, and another. The moment passes and she’s moving, tucked low and sprinting for the cover of the gates as the forest behind her erupts.

    It was too quiet.


  • O, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength! But it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.

    Keira struggled with the giant’s body, straightening her limbs and laying her out with the other fallen giants. It didn’t matter that they’d be reclaimed, raised, sent back into the battle. It mattered that the idiot Tormtar said it wasn’t worth doing, that it wouldn’t stop them taking Jiyyd. He was wrong. She was right. They should be respected, because otherwise when the pitiful defence was overrun, what could the giants justify doing in return? Maybe they would anyway, or the orcs would. Still better to try respect, negotiation.

    Del didn’t understand that Tempus was war, not justice. No matter why they fought, the giants fought well, with honour. They left the sneaking and the quiet work to bugbears and goblins. If the Legion had the sense, they’d be sending their own scouts south to strike at command, the priests, and the support. Still they didn’t know why they fought. Still they didn’t try to understand.

    Soon, Jerr would try to meet with Sharn. It wasn’t something that could be done at the lines. Too many voices, all thinking they should speak. Words of bravado, resistance and ultimate futility. Sharn wasn’t young. Sharn was more than a beast, striking blindly for food. The giants, orcs, and the bugbear alliance all spoke of something more. Still, they didn’t try to understand. They were glad, when battle was finally joined. Happy that their walls would be used. Ignorant, and foolish to settle into the idea of war.

    Keira loosed arrows into the troop of archers on the plain below, ducking behind the ramparts when their attention shifted to her. Ultimately pointless. The orcs would come again. She shouldn’t be here, risking herself in support of the fools that shrank from understanding and truth. The biggest truth was that people would die. Many, many people would die. They’d die willingly, believing they defended a tiny village. Truly war was a fearful result of the inability to see another way to resolve the conflicts.

    Another arrow, another death, and they said that murder was wrong. That orc hadn’t attacked her, just turned at the wrong moment, moving its shield aside. Self defence? No. Defending another? That wasn’t good enough justification. She knew that everyone she’d killed could have gone on to harm another, had hurt or killed in their past.

    It was calming, when the giants and orcs cornered the few archers at the west point. Obvious almost immediately that they couldn’t hold against the armoured troops climbing to the plateau. Keira had taken one giant down with some help and serious wounds to herself. Better now, to run, alert the others, get reinforcements. Elenwyd fell. Khory fell.

    War will always thrive as long as people are willing to fight. To fight requires brutality, ruthlessness – and that spirit remains long after the trumpets are quiet and the fields are cleared. Keira smiled grimly at the memory of the brief flash of hasted violence in the middle of the orcs. Quick, deadly, decisive. Precision, not power.

    There is no defence. There are no innocents. We kill because we choose to. We kill because we can. Most of all, we kill because we want to, because we come to like it. All the dressing and justification is meaningless. Is one giant worth more than one farmer in Jiyyd? Is one orc worth more than one of the Legion? We choose, we decide and then we act. We want to kill, and so we kill.

    Another arrow, another death.

    Meaningless.


  • There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.

    The man’s legs twitched, bound feet scrabbling for purchase, struggling to get them under him, to get some sort of leverage. Keira watched her hands in his hair, holding his head under the water. He wanted a test of Faith. Always interesting to see where people start to crack. She dragged his head out and left him coughing on the floor for a while. Interesting that Dentin wouldn’t do this himself yet was happy to watch, happy to commission such help. Keira kicked the bound man for good measure while thinking what to do next.

    A younger Keira, hunched on a bench in the Commons, blood freezing into the wounds more than scabbing under the pressure. Eastlanders, always trouble on the road south. If you walk the road too often, you get seen. Luck runs out. She barely notices the young human clucking around her, wrapping her in a fine cloak, the crest of the La’Thayet family discreetly embroidered on the collar. She left some money too, and the word that Evendar the clothier may have need of a runner. Keira limps away to the Inn, to rest.

    The man’s breathing was more normal again. Clear enough for him to ask the usual pointless questions. Anyone that binds you, blindfolds you and half drowns you will tell you who they are, when they’re ready. They’re not waiting on the social nicety for you to ask. She hauls him up to a kneeling position, so he can see the now pinkish water in the font. He seems unimpressed, maybe bored, so she slaps, backhanded so the electrical jolt from her gloves dissipates over his damp face. Surely, the Ilmatrians of the Yellow Rose would approve. The man does too, eyes widening, a cry forming in his throat before she drags his head forward and under the water again.

    A younger Keira sits by the fire with a pale elven priest. She sits in the 2nd position of meditation, listening as he tells of Corellon’s blood and how the elves were formed. It is not right to ask questions of those who teach, if you should already know the answer, so she listens patiently. Raryldor was surprised to hear that she hadn’t grown up among elves, concerned that she knew little of the ways of their people. She’d noticed his distaste at her use of the inelegant human crossbows against goblins earlier. He asks of her life previously, at the monastery, and she tells him of the training and the meditations and the harsh winters of the mountains, the sacrifices necessary to survive in such places, not knowing that Auril was one of the furies that tried to oust Corellon from Arvandor. She flinches from his anger, runs when he says he’ll teach her no more.

    The sound of his head striking the font is flat and surprisingly muted in the acoustics of the cave. He had been talking out of turn, again. He still hadn’t accepted Dentin’s offer of release. She nods to the violinist who strikes up a lively and discordant tune to cover the sounds of feet and fists. His cries apparently unnoticed by the guards of the Temple. They’ve heard screams before. It’s engaging, to feel the meter of the music, timing the blows appropriately, provoking cries at harmonious points of the melody. Keira’s sure she’s met this man before. One of the idiots killed by the Yuan Ti, west of Peltarch when the drow spy instigated a fight. He’s bloodied and hurting, but still resistant; spitting at Dentin again when he offers the release from this pain.

    Bow had been teaching her to use a longbow. He seemed kind, eager to help her with her faltering elven. She learned fast, so it seemed likely that her mother had laid the foundations in trance. Other hallmarks of the elves must have been lost, over time at the Order. She still couldn’t bear Bow touching her. Even the brief contacts to improve her stance left her shaken and tense. He was eager to help. Sometimes, after practicing on the ever-present swarms of goblins around the lake he’d sit with her and hold her. If he did it for long enough, the tension always left her, retreating inside, leaving the limp body behind. Maybe if she’d done something different, been someone different, he wouldn’t have tired of her weakness and found Fadien. But she wasn’t, and he did.

    To maintain interest, it’s important to vary rhythm and surprise the senses. The body becomes inured to repetitive signals. Keira’s been careful to leave the man’s head and face alone for a while during the beatings, so it’s time to make him sit up. Thankfully, he’s not talking any more, but he does eye the knife with a certain respect. They switch places, the violinist now following Keira’s moves with the knife, the bow skittering over the strings as the blade flicks in to open shallow cuts over his cheeks and forehead. He gathers himself and tries to draw himself away from the feel of blood on his face and in his eyes. She smiles and reaches for a bottle of spirits.

    Elissa holds her, warm under the cloak, as they watch the sun rise behind Norwick’s graveyard. It’s truth that she speaks, when she tells of the harsh judgements of others. How they seek to slay what they don’t understand; like the people that sacked the Order. How each person has their own path, and if that truly had value, the Paladins would try to teach, to inspire change, but they don’t. They want to kill, they like to kill. They just prefer to do it when their little rules tell them they are good people to do so. So they wait, watching, hoping for an excuse to cut you down. Their laws are lies to shield them from self-knowledge because wisdom is brought by doubt, not certainty. The secret is always not to be caught, for deception and secrecy and camouflage to hide the truth from them. The secret is to find people that understand you.

    The cave reeks of cheap brandy, bought more for it’s strength than flavour. Alvah’s eyes are open and dull despite the stinging liquor and he’s retreating inside again. His eyes don’t focus on the goblin grenade, so she bounces it gently off his forehead, steadying him with a hand in his hair. It’s beautiful. The eyes focus, pupils contract, she can see the spark of recognition in his eyes, the flash of understanding like a good joke. The scene; a bound man. The build up; flammable spirits, a nearby but unattainable water source, and some unstable goblin explosives. Keira steadies him, twisting his head sharply back to open his mouth, gradually easing the fragile clay pot between his teeth. His eyes reflect as she warns him not to bite it.

    Punchline.

    The Banites, Rolan and Allanon, had lead her down here, to Arnath. It had been a place where she was accepted. It was a place she understood. Everyone down here had something to hide, something to fear and it was all understood. But now it would end. She’d seen Gildor’s child taken, and later returned. She’d watched Sottoth come, and go. She’d watched the Guard Captain, Arizima, lured back up to Lathander’s light with empty promises of what awaited her. Her death was as much her own doing as the people sent to kill her. She’d noted the Hedia lusting after a vampire, in service to some other mistress, another Velsharoonite. She’d watched Arah return this night with an army and yet the Drow would still come and there were too many of them. Arnath would fall. All that was left was prayer, and faith that they would also hurt.

    It’s time. Letting the man free enough to cough and spit the grenade away she hands over to Dentin. Alvah has passed what bizarre affirmation the Gondar wanted only the vows and the branding remain. Keira pads away to leave them to it. It’s time she returned to observe the curse of the lich, see whether any of the victims had turned yet. Elvadriel’s library indicated it was likely. If they asked, if they wanted her help, she’d show them. If they wanted to deal with another threat in secret, the good and holy orders, let them deal with it.

    If this didn’t break them, there was always tomorrow.


  • It will end in blood, as it always does. You will never master your own destiny, always following where you’re lead.

    What a gentleman, that nice Jerr is…

    // Since this tale is a little nasty and violent, I put it in the other place. Maybe I'm being too careful, but I tried to make it feel quite horrible. //


  • We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

    Keira watched Maya, listening to the story. She would be trouble, it was terribly obvious. So easy to slip and see if Maya would take the chance to destroy another evil thing. Keira listened to the tales of torture and hardship with detached interest. Someone really wanted Maya back down here on the plane rather than out, fighting demons.

    They were too competent though. Even after Maya had been given the opportunity to meet with the one responsible, she’d just killed him. Quickly, almost mercifully. Fighting with Honor. Tempus’ way. Where was the wisdom or vision for a longer campaign? Why did it happen? Best not to ask Maya that just yet. She would be trouble, recognizing Keira as a different sort of warrior. Much better to be overlooked as insignificant.

    The Trouble in Jiyyd was worse. Orcs raiding for supplies, this time. Skilled, well-planned attack. Chances of a successful defence against a concerted attack were close to nothing. Would they listen and build better defences? Time will tell. The important thing is to watch them fall. Temple is quieter now, maybe a good thing if people are out doing Her work. Time will tell.

    Keira stands with bow drawn, watching the goblins fall at the South Gate. Another shaft into the melee. Messy, undisciplined. The gate left open again. Such damage a lone goblin could make with a keg. She steps up to a goblin bold enough to risk an attack on Nicahh’s back and twists its neck expertly. She watches Nicahh move on again keeping to Aelhaearn’s side. More mass in the forest, waves of them pushed before the bugbears.

    Aelhaearn afterwards, talking of right and sovereignty and how it would be elsewhere. Refusing to help bring in a fugitive, setting his stamp on Lands controlled by Norwick. Regrettable that it might come to this. The woman would be found and retrieved, regardless. Unfortunate if William and Aelhaearn have to throw themselves in the way. Better maybe to see if Raver will bring the woman in. Worth seeing how William falls, worth seeing if she does. Warm her up for the trouble between the Camp and the City. She’s weak, She’s left before over the Drow. She leaves when it gets difficult.

    Maya will be trouble. She shouldn’t be here.

    Keira pauses on the landing, a familiar scent caught in swirls of red and orange like velvet flames. She smiles and glides on silent feet nearer to the door of Nicahh’s room to listen. Silence, not even breathing. She frowns, looking along the hallway. Definite drifting smells of sweat, exertion, sex. Nyda? Here? No. Not unless she’s drifted again.

    Moving again, down the landing, Keira sees her own door ajar. It’s always locked. Always. Unless Nicahh went in there afterwards for something. She sniffs the air again. Yes. Definitely Nicahh. She pads inside and closes the door softly watching the shadows. Soft, even breathing from the bed. She waits, patiently listening for a change, a shift, another person. Silence.

    Keira advances on the bed and watches Nicahh, trying to draw the threads of the past few hours out of the air. She leans closer to the pale arm drifting on the pillow, examining the discoloration and chafing in the soft lamplight. Looking around again, noting the movement of some of the chains, some of the other tools. Keira smiles, easing the blankets back to reveal a shapely ankle, also bruised.

    Keira slides under the covers with practiced slowness and familiarity and curls up around Nicahh, listening to her breathe. Useful to know she likes some things a little rougher, sometimes.

    No wonder she’s tired.


  • If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each one's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm any hostility.

    I look at the knives, remembering. My hands move, sharpening, cleaning, the easy movements of long familiarity. So long since I’ve done this. So long since I’ve wanted to. The knives are always there to return to, constant. Everything outside, meaningless. Time to look inside again.

    I never used to lie. I never used to lie well. Now it’s more and more needed. They made me lie, made me turn from the truth I followed into… what? I feel my fingers, relaxed around the hilt, watch the tip of the blade ease under my skin. It’s better than I remember it, the pain dancing around the edges of my eyes like warmth. I can see the bitterness and lies draining away, leaving me empty again.

    A flick of the blade and it lifts from the skin, blood spatters in a loose spray to the floor. Why do they come now? First Sy’wyn, then this half-elf boy. Claiming Fenmarel’s name, coming for me. Why now. Why do this to me, I’m not worth it. I’m just blood, gently pulsing. Just warm blood, dripping from cold fingers as I feel my body trying to stop it. Calmer now, like I remembered from before. They come, talking of family, of pack, of something like survival.

    It’s not worth it. Survival. The times I watch them come back from death to make the same mistakes over again. The times I watch them throw their lives to save … nothing worth saving. Why bother. They wouldn’t come for me. Wouldn’t try to drag me back here. Why get clawed and bitten and stabbed and mauled for some stupid paladin, or a lying thief of a Sail? Futile. Except to see the face of the man as he realises the corpse won’t return. That was real. That was worthy.

    Blood has clotted, arm is cold to the touch. I’ll never be worthy of Her. I can’t do enough. Not a mage, not a warrior. I can’t command the orbs to rip the plane apart. Can’t face the Selunites I can see, let alone any of her other messengers. Insignificant, useless in shadows. I can do one thing, just one, and they’ll destroy me. What would it be, though? Who to kill, quietly? Who would make a difference? Is it enough, to stand and wait and watch, while others wield a knife?

    I can see my knuckles whiten around the blade. I can feel the pointless, impotent rage welling. I start another cut, to let it out.

    Bloodsmell. Old, cold sweat. This isn’t the smell he wants instead of the perfume, is it? Can feel my face twisting, working, like it belongs to someone else. Not the calm detachment of the training, more like it’s just not me, anymore. Like the feelings of the hunt. How did I let this happen. How can I be this weak. Old, quiet Keira. Trapped in a twitching corpse. Colder, still. Something drips. How can he say he wants this, wants me?

    Liar.

    Should never have taken him to the temple. Stupid of me. Stupid.

    Weak.

    What have I done?

    Nothing.

    // I blame DM Ugly for giving her perfectly justified goodpoints, it obviously doesn't agree with her 🙂


  • Character is what we are in the dark

    I see the greys of the darkened room by the moonlight seeping past the drapes. Warm threads of sleep smell hang like purple gauze over the bed, shifting like smoke as she turns over. The noises of the house are quiet; sheets are clean and slightly cool against the skin. I listen to her breath, low and even and watch as she sleeps. Another look over the familiar shapes of the dresser, the nightmare plant, the shadows of home and I can pull back into reverie.

    Keira counting the hobgoblins, watching the fight unfold as she runs towards them. Jinking roll sideways and past the lead swordsman. Up again, almost inside the mage’s arms as he casts. Slap to his arm, disrupting the careful arcane motions as her body spins, the other arm windmilling round into the shaman, hand sweeping up his face, rolling his head back. The trailing leg comes round, stamping on the back of the shaman’s knee and starting the leap that brings her other foot up to meet the guard following her in. A flourish, reckless in a more dangerous fight, but worth practicing.

    Stepping inside the swing of the morningstar to control the arm, bring it round in the continuing circle as she crouches to let him fall over her back. Short punch to the throat as he lands and moving again. Triangular step outside the thrusting shortsword, letting it pass as she crosses behind, two jabs to kidney and floating ribs and he’s past.

    Darkness. Silence.

    Like at the Festival, shouldn’t rely on sight. Her stance shifts, lower, feet sweeping carefully over the floor, weight on the back foot until it’s time to move. Moving to the pungent smell of acid, hands up to guard her face, then out to grab. Step. Close. Yell, even though she can’t hear it. Something flinches, a brush of limbs as they step back, and she knows where to kick. Sound and sight return swiftly and she looks over the survivors as they press the attack. They never learn when they should run.

    Keira smiles.

    Keira smiles up at Jerr, his face pale in the darkness. Takes off her helm as requested, watches him. Watches him look at her, a shadow in the twilight. He leans close, head dipping and she sees his eye, her thumb. He’s too close. A knee, then, and use his motion to tip him over the edge behind her. He’s too large to wrestle comfortably; much better at distance, careful jabs to soft places. Keira smiles up at Jerr’s approaching face, decided on the eye.

    Listening to the sound of the stream beneath the Watchtower as she feels his stubble, his lips brush her neck. Teeth. She gasps slightly as he bites her and then returns, quietly for a big man, to the others near the tower. She resumes position, watching for the drow, feeling the chill of the breeze on the dampened skin of her neck.

    Darkness. Jerr again, telling how important collars are to the Yuan Ti. How symbolic necks are, how intimate. How important to him, as well as the Yuan Ti. Keira watched him, calmer now the elf thief had returned. Calmer now that his failure to rescue the elf hadn’t hurt the fragile relationship he’d built with the Yuan Ti. There’d be cost for that, but that was for tomorrow. He should have been happy to let the elf go, a murderer, hunting the saurials for their equipment with a half-orc.

    He’d hunted them still after calling us down there to retrieve the halforc’s body from the saurials that defended themselves. The same thin lies about patrolling, and then bloody violence. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters until you meet someone who’ll show you why it matters to them. Should have let the elf die and been happy. Like a paladin, sacrificing a life for the greater good.

    I stretch, feeling the warmth of her against my naked back. Her arm is slight, delicate in sleep, carelessly thrown over me. She mumbles something indistinct into my shoulder but she sleeps still, settling against me. I can smell her hair, hints of clove and lemon wrapped around her scent. I close my eyes, melting into her, and smile as I drift again.

    Darkness. Selune’s hateful light hidden by the clouds as Keira slinks along the tree line near the path. Head swings, ears perked to watch the conversation at the junction. Harsh, guttural language again. Dark brown smells of boredom and mistrust as another watches from the ridge. The decision to kill is a moral one. The decision of how to kill is just tactics, expedience. She lopes easily from cover, legs tensed to spring.

    Dancing again, the first nudge from her shoulder to unbalance him as she twists to rip the hamstrings from the back of his legs. Snapping at the other to keep it at bay before returning to the throat falling towards her. Blood sprays to the snow. She skips sideways to avoid the thrown axe and snaps again at the overextended arm of the one near her. She can smell the fear now, a sickly red threading beginning to wreath the figures in the night. A ripping bite and he falls, her legs moving under her as she lands, running up the ridge to the axe thrower.

    He goes down easily, last breath steaming in the air, eyes blink slowly, looking up at her as blood drips from her jaws onto his upturned face. Keira looks around, listens for others before turning her attention to the body. When she’s done, most of her face is covered in gore but she’s less hungry, the kill half-eaten. She pads silently back and scrubs herself clean with fresh snow when she changes.

    He’s troubled, in pain. She can see it, can smell it. Keira hears him ask to go to Arnath, underground, darkness. Looking for a Lady in the caves. Looking for Her. Laucian has lost someone dear to him. It screams from his pores and eyes like fire. So he seeks some truth in the darkness and she will help. Jerr and Yuna following through the darkness, through the shadows. They’re not here to guard. She’s sent the shadows to guide Laucian to her, down in the caves. Enlightenment has a price, though and Jerr falls, driven into a corner by a shade. Yuna and Laucian, dazed after the fight, unsure what to do.

    Keira sees her. Keira sees who he’s looking for. The pale body, bloody on the altar, the Nightbringer standing over her. She blesses her there, in the cave. Lets Keira see her for a moment before she’s gone, in shadow. Lets her see Laucian, stumbling towards the ruined body of his love, something inarticulate in his throat. This is all for him, not the others. Keira gathers Yuna and Jerr and retreats outside the cave to tend wounds and wait for Her to finish with Laucian. Keira smiles.

    Darkness. A cave, green eyes flashing, hot breath on her face, pain. Darkness, the pit, his hands on her, powerless to resist. Green eyes flash again, in darkness. He smiles, watching her, telling her how she’ll serve the pack, in time. Sy’wyn, bleeding, breath short from exertion, face lined with stress, green eyes dull. Blood, pulsing from a throat, weakens, stops. Darkness. Green eyes loom above her, a promise, a warning. Go deep, deeper.

    A cave, darkness. The sound of water dripping punctuated by a gasp of pleasure. Hands move over oil-slickened skin. Green eyes, watching. A cave, darkness. The last breath sighs from another mouth beneath her hands. The demon, promising power over men if she’ll just turn from her Goddess. A knife works in flesh, lifting skin with a delicate caress. Blood wells up, over the arm in graceful parabola and drops, perfectly round to the floor. A hand, caresses under her clothes, cups a breast, thumb grazing the nipple. Green eyes, glint in candlelight. She gasps, biting her lip.

    Blood sprays, falls to the snow. Thus the elves are born. Darkness. Blood sprays, a body falls, a knife is cleaned. She can feel flesh between her teeth, can taste blood in her mouth, smell it heavy in the air. Green eyes, watching. Keira starts to smile.

    I swallow hard, jolted from reverie, and flushed with… something. I listen quietly, still, to the sound of her breathing, unchanged, even. Only the memory of the blood, only the thought of the flesh. It’s too hot, in the bed. I should go and rest alone but her arm holds me with a relaxed, fluid strength. She smells warm and good. She wants me here. I listen a few moments longer to be sure she still sleeps before curling up, drawing her arm closer around me. Darkness.

    I dip my head, kiss her fingers, and wait for morning in her arms.

    She smells good.

    // Thanks to Wykith, LD, Nilla, RW, MND, Sethan, Yeahchris, Stoned_apple, v_black, Archon and all the others who've helped me to build the increasingly twisted mess that is Keira


  • The flame of anger, bright and brief, sharpens the barb of love

    Nicahh told me not to kill him. She said it was a blessing, to see him again. Told me I wouldn't kill him. Told me -not- to kill him. I look down at my hands, twisted again into fists in the fabric of the dress he gave me, years ago. blue. My color, he'd said, not hers. Not what I wear as a uniform. Thinking of him in broken reverie, of him returning like a ghost. Green eyes in darkness, reclaiming the charade that something used to get inside of me. I can see him now, watching, maybe chuckling… no. No. He wouldn't laugh over this, gone too far for that. Should talk to him, apologise. I tell my hands to relax, again.

    It's happening more often, speaking without thinking, lashing out at people close to me. Hedia takes it the worst, eyes so hurt and trusting. The others look more careful around me now, like they've finally recognised who I am. I shouldn't need them to stop me. I shouldn't need them to ask questions I should ask myself. I should be able to control this. Should be able to control myself, but it's only afterwards, with reflection that I see it. Maybe that's how it is for everyone else, only seeing clearly afterwards. I tell my hands to relax, again.

    He returns, slipping back into our lives with the comfortable familiarity of a knife. It's not how large or sharp the blade is but where you put it that has the greatest effect. He returns, quietly. His silence, a reproving mirror of my own, encouraging reflection. No. He wouldn't chuckle. He's not really here. He said he'd come for my soul, then lied and said that was in jest. He knows. I feel his eyes on me and he knows. I see him and I want to... be weak again, tell him what I've done. Tell him all I've done and then he can kill me, then it'll end. Except that it's wrong. I'm not weak, not going to do that. Not going to give up. Because he knows, telling him is something I do for me, not him. Tempting, but that's why we choose to be weak so often. I tell my hands to relax, again.

    He sees I've grown, sees I've changed. How much can he know? Would She betray my secrets? Again, a mirror for me to look at myself. So similar to the ones I show others. The secrets are holy, the lies are holy. Careful webs spun to support my life. I can walk them with familiar ease now. Can talk like I couldn't before. People are noticing me, seeing me more clearly. That isn't a good thing, marking out the time I have left, before they realise. I need to accept my death, move forward again. Not in a cave-in. Not in a meaningless scuffle with an undead lord who mocks our existence and futile disturbance of his home. Not in the forest, hunting. Like in the picture, alone under a blood-red moon, surrounded by the bodies. Even as they kill me, they'll know that it can't all be undone, that I've done enough damage to be remembered, however briefly. I tell my hands to relax, again.

    She told me not to kill him. It's been long in coming, but maybe today is the day he has come to kill me.


  • The world is a harsh and unforgiving place, with uncompromising demands on those who would forge their own path. Rely not on others for protection, for betrayal comes easily, but on the skills of camouflage, deception, and secrecy. Follow the way of the Lone Wolf, for his is the path of self-sufficiency.

    We all walk our own path. Others speak of honor, of right and wrong, good and evil, living in service of some ideal, furthering joy, pleasure, knowledge, creation or destruction. Their ways are not my ways. Fenmarel understands. All their faiths must crush reason, sense and understanding in some way to prevail. Fenmarel’s way accepts that the path is your path, yours alone. Your guide is yourself. Letting others guide you leads to falsehood and weakness.

    No faith deserves respect. No faith deserves understanding. No person deserves respect. No person deserves understanding. You can walk a path and give nothing to anything, never hope, never dream, never plan a futile future and you’ll never be disappointed. You’ll be pure and truly alone. It’s a harsh path through a harsh world, with only yourself to rely on.

    No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine they can reach one another. In reality they just pass each other by. The people and the faiths will argue and differ over what should be respected. Even if you don’t respect another, you can try to understand them. You can acknowledge the complexity of their belief and see the patterns closer than you did before. You can understand honor without displaying it. You can respect power without desiring it. You can acknowledge the efficiency of methods without adopting them. How else can you fight, without knowing an enemy? How can you prevent something without understanding its causes?

    What we don’t understand we either worship or fear. A successful life is one that is lived through understanding and pursuing one's own path, not chasing after the dreams of others. Except that some faith is weak. Some faith fears to let its devout understand the opposition, because they know that blindness and ignorance and misunderstanding are vital. Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, we’re helpless to make ourselves understood.

    Yet Elenwyd says she wants to help me. She sees I am different and she doesn’t understand. Because she doesn’t understand, she cannot help. She can only recite her faith by rote and look hurt that the same light burning within her exists outside me and cannot penetrate, because I know the truths that lie in that darkness. She knows I’ve been hurt but she doesn’t ask how, when, why. She doesn’t ask what impurities were burned away in those fires. She seems to think that I can discard my life, my past, my faith in a way that she would never contemplate, simply because it is not her past.

    My Order would not be worthy of respect for her, the things we did, to train ourselves, to prepare us to see Her truth. Worse, she cannot understand us because, for her, Truth is absolute, known to Torm and passed to his faithful. For her a lie is something you say that you know to be false and Torm would be displeased. For us, a lie is something said that is not true, no matter how earnestly the speaker believes it. This is the way that the Triad’s followers lie. They believe so firmly in their rightness that their words must be true. Like any person, they can be wrong but they are not raised to question their perception in that way.

    So when a man on his own path carries a book she doesn’t understand, a book she denounces as evil and fears, what does she do? She watches, rather than acts. She follows him to see the man take the book to Oscura, and ultimately to the Temple of Shar because to intervene would make her a thief, which might displease Torm. I watch as well, no need to guide this man, any could tell him where Oscura is, where another library lies, the librarians tell him to go to the Temple. I have not seen his book and neither has Elenwyd. Yet she blames me, for not stopping him. How will he learn, if I prevent him learning? She doesn’t blame her inaction because she acted according to her path and I did not act according to her path. I am at fault, in her eyes because my god is not hers, my path is not hers. This is not help, or atonement. This is judgement by her law, maybe by Torm’s law.

    Wolf is almost as bad as her. Raised to defend what is important, to him. Retribution and vengeance come swift from him, like lightning from the empty skies of his faith. Does it disrupt balance? Remove it. Does it disrespect the Forest Queen? Destroy it. So simple. Simple because he sees actions and decides how to respond. Action and response. No thought. His eyes may as well exist in his sword-arm because it seems precious little passes through his head for consideration.

    Perception again. The difference between truth and what someone only says is Truth. So much is just words heard, things seen, everything warped by perception and re-told. Killing a deer. For him, it’s worth killing in vengeance. I did not kill a deer. I killed something I know I don’t understand. I killed something that was not a deer, because deer do not use magic like teleportation. But it looked like a deer, so to him it was a deer. To me it looks like a deer, to him it is a deer. Because it looks like a deer to him, it is the same as the other deer he spoke to, yet he did not speak to the one I killed. He looks at me distrustfully, as if I twist words for advantage. I show two things that are different, that he thought were identical and he blames me for his lack of understanding.

    Lana, Nicahh’s slave, is beautiful. Sculpted by an artist over many years, there is almost nothing left of a person in her at all. No spark, no path, no faith, nothing. She follows her mistress, absolutely, totally reliant on direction and guidance from another. Exquisite care and such understanding have shaped her. An example of a master craftsman’s work that I can respect for its brilliance, as I know it’s not a path I’d want to follow, or wish upon another. She can’t be freed yet. Without authority to guide her, she’d starve and die - if she was lucky. More likely another, less charitable, would find her and put her to service. Healing her will take time, but Nicahh wants to help her rather than feed her to the demon, Shalah, as she originally planned. Shouldn’t have spoken to her, made her real in perception. Should have left her as just another body because it’s easier to deal with people that you don’t care about.

    She reminds me of me, when I first came to Narfell. Trained to some art, eager to use those skills for others, looking for a place to belong. I still remember feeling lost and confused when things happened outside my sheltered experience. I remember doing the things I’ve since learned to hide. The fear never truly leaves. The fear that it’s all a mistake and I should have died and that one day someone will rise up and correct that. Nothing to do with that fear except acknowledge it and move past it. Try not to let it show too much. Showing weakness to them is showing lack of worth. Lana exists to please her mistress. Where is my worth, now? The new me roars and elbows for space and it screams that it doesn’t care. It knows that any perception of worth is self-fulfilling and ultimately worthless. It… She knows that we live in a moment of now, future uncertain, past gone. Life without consequence and life without consequence, except that there are always consequences. Keira knows that, so even now I’ve made a chain for myself to strain against but not to break.

    She gave me a collar. Buckled it around my neck. She knows me so well. Knows that I know what she does for me. One day, I might be strong like her. Until then I’ll just be me. That’s the illusion of control. We know I could walk away and that’s important. If I couldn’t walk away, she wouldn’t keep me so close. I could walk away, but I choose to stay, choose to belong. I think Elissa was right, years ago. Love is a gift, nothing more, can’t be conditions to it. You choose to give and they do … whatever they do with it. Maybe give something in return, maybe not. You give without conditions; can take it back whenever you choose. If you can let yourself be happy with that, if you can let yourself be content with whatever they give back, then you’ve got a place and what else could you need?

    Told her I didn’t love her. We both know I lied. It doesn’t matter. Needed to say it, to be sure. Whatever love is, whatever I meant, I lied. I still don’t lie well. She knew already, wasn’t for her, was for me and what she told me in return was something I knew already. It won’t last. Can’t last. But for now, it’s still right. There are still the echoes of the shy woman choosing to let her carve her wings into my back. Said I was hers, then and we looked at each other. We grow, we change, I’ve changed more this year than I thought I could. We’re still sisters, though. Closer to me than Hedia or Amy or Elor or any of the others that came from pain.

    Every so often, she says something. Says I’m hers. That infuriated Sy’wyn, makes Jerr disagree and try to tell me Fenmarel’s way. Makes others look at me awkwardly, but it’s not something for me to answer. She’s not saying it for them, because they don’t believe it. I’m not a possession, can’t be owned, not a slave. But when she says it, I hear, and I check, and I think ’Am I’, still? One day I’ll think and I’ll answer no, a powerful word, but that day is not today. Like Dirge saw in the painting, I have a chain, but it’s one I choose, one I’m holding the end of.

    I think that’s the closest thing to freedom.


  • Of all the sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back–in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.

    The avalanche begins with a pebble. The dam breached by a trickle that picks and claws its way free of restraining rock. Jiyyd. Calm again after the drow attacks of a few nights ago. Walking amongst them, smelling the fear and weakness, watching the spasms as they inch, slowly towards their end. Children, again. Lilly’s girl, Ragnhild’s girl. They see a kind of immortality in their children, a life passed into the future as if that will outrun the stormwinds coming. She’s wise, the barbarian woman, feeling that people grow to be like their parents. All we are, growing as we’re shaped by the world, what they let us see of it.

    Knowing that, is there choice? To turn from what I remember, what I know and leap into the imaginary world of happy elves and trees and… hugging and … blindness. Would I put out my eyes, burn my skin past feeling or rip the nose from my face? No. Choosing ignorance doesn’t make the truth of the world disappear. Elenwyd needs to understand that.

    Alexi speaks, cursing clerics and the faithful that believe so hard in their own visions that they forget there are other truths than theirs. Maybe they can learn, maybe it’s not too late for some of them, if they can see this flaw in others. Harder to see it in ourselves. Her name rolls over my tongue, a label for so many feelings, observations. Why would she help me? Why would she want to? How can she praise her own god and in the same breath dismiss Fenmarel as no-one she’s heard of, unworthy next to Torm? The Mystran seems to understand, Lilly looks like she’d rise and speak more. It’s interesting, talking with them, listening. Feels like I can help them.

    Then the pebble falls. A brief flash and Yu Shei stands on the guard tower above the square. Flash again and she’s beside me, near the bench. A flash and the Stag is here again. It’s come back and I can see in its nasty little eyes that it knows me still. It knows things that shouldn’t be known, things that should be secret, Her things. The chatter fades around me as I look at the Stag, he looks back at me. They talk, oblivious to the betrayer amongst them, the liar and the killer. They don’t see it. They just talk about how nice it is, how it saves people, how it talks, to druids. I can’t win this, not here. Can’t fight it without losing something else. No reason not to try, though. Better to drag it back into the darkness with me.

    Then a scent on the wind from the west drifts in. Wolf. He’d understand, he’d know what to do about this… impostor. Don’t know what it is, but it’s not a Stag, just looks like one. It watches me leave with its big, brown, liar’s eyes.

    Lines of Wolf’s back are hunched, shoulders slumped as he sits on Hedia’s rock. The rock of outcasts banished from Jiyyd that still try to warm themselves by that fire. He doesn’t look up as I approach. Doesn’t respond when I ask why he attacked Star. Doesn’t say anything except to leave him alone. We’re all alone. I was wrong to seek his advice, wrong to try to get help to fight whatever demon comes to attack me. Rely not on others for protection. It’s supposed to be harsh, supposed to be testing me. Time to go back, face it, make my own path.

    Lilin’s there. Feels good to have her near, now we know how to work together, now she’s shown me she’s stronger. The Stag watches me come back, to talk about it. Foreshadowing destruction. It’s not owned. They say it’s intelligent, its own being. As worthy of life and respect as any other, as worthy as a worg, or a wolf, or a kobold, or a human. Yu Shei stands, watching my stance shift, she knows what’s coming. She doesn’t stop me, just tells what she’d prefer. I can see the Stag retreat out of the corner of my eye, smell something shift in whatever shell of a deer the demon has left to be touched by fear.

    I feel myself bunch to strike. I see my hands grasp the muzzle, round its neck. I feel it twist, resistance growing until the snap as the neck breaks. It feels good and right and I can taste its blood on my lips and… They’re watching me. The Stag watches me. I nod slightly, acknowledging Yu Shei’s words. Then I leap and it happens like I saw, like it usually does. The body crumples to the ground, a dead deer. Whatever was riding it has gone, for now.

    Best not to just settle down and eat here in town, need to take it somewhere safe. The last part of a good hunt, to eat and know that you were stronger and so you live on and what you’re eating doesn’t. ‘Why?’ They ask. They don’t see what it carried. Blind to its deceptions. Chattering like sparrows about how this Stag has saved lives in Thay, is (was) an intelligent thing. How it’s holy. Not to me. They never think of the wolves being holy to Fenmarel, or the bears to Auril, or others. They care for the weak, the prey and they deceive themselves. I draw my knife.

    Pebbles fall, gathering others, gathering speed. Lilly steps up to my kill; says it should be buried. Waste of meat, I ignore her, looking the body over, jointing it in my mind, seeing the knife slice through flesh, lifting skin. Then she tries to take it. My kill. She tries to take my kill. Already I can feel her throat in my teeth, my legs tensing and this is wrong. She shouldn’t do this. Not my Kill. Nicahh could, maybe Lilin but Lilly? No. I can feel other eyes on me as Lilly casts, strength to help her steal, and I can’t let this happen. It’s mine.

    Forcing what I should do to Lilly to the back of my head, blood flecks in pink hair for tomorrow, not today. I grab the hind legs. My kill, not hers. We both pull and the deer doesn’t move. I can feel it tickling at me, urging me to let it out, to show Lilly her place. She says she wants to challenge me for it. Challenge me for my kill? Fine! I’ll have her liver! The old Keira watches, noting Alexi moving, closing in. She sees Just’ene and Masdar coming. Alexi slaps me, a distraction to give Lilly an edge and I take it, feeling my cheek redden from the blow. I feel my lips roll back into a snarl of fury and I can see his face coming away, ripped by my claws and I can feel how I die, cornered amidst a heap of corpses. But not today. Today I quiet the growl at the back of my throat and bring words instead of blood.

    ‘My Kill. Okay to kill them for food. Shouldn’t waste it.

    It almost stops there, with Just’ene dismissing us, telling us to take it outside, but the boulders roll. Wolf walks in the gates, stops, watches for a moment before casting his protections, drawing sword. He doesn’t pause, just says he warned me, doesn’t realise it wasn’t a stag, doesn’t know it was more than that. He doesn’t try to understand, just acts. His first swing at my legs misses but I know I can’t fight him and keep holding my kill. I run, putting the benches and people between us, letting the Guards intervene. They talk to him, tell us all to get out, take it away from them. Murder unseen is murder uncared for. Perception is everything. The other watchers chatter still, Zoma and Ragnhild close, watching with concerned eyes. None of them think this is important, so why don’t they leave it alone, leave me to my food.

    The guards usher us out, Wolf following. Alexi helping move my kill. I can feel him itching to take it away, to steal it. Must watch him. Some of the watchers follow and we pause again outside the Sisterhouse. Home, safe. Lilly watches. Fighting between us is good, but not when others come. She should fight too, if we’re family.

    Wolf approaches, casting. Clouds boil and lightning lances from the skies over our gate, our home. I roll clear, and Lilly watches. Lightning strikes again as Wolf calls for its aid, and Lilly watches. He can see I’m unharmed and advances, still not asking why. Lilly watches as he strikes at me, his classic strike to the legs, and I fall. Twisting to my feet again I try to rise and he brings me down. Alone. I open myself a crack and surge to my feet. Finally, Lilly joins in, taking his legs from behind. Thankyou, Sister. Even bark covered, on the ground he’s open, kick to the ribs, stamp to the knee just where his armor ends, claw to the eyes. On the ground, he’s mine. I barely notice when he stops moving, can’t let him up again, have hands on his throat when Zoma drags me off him.

    Too close. They nearly killed me. Can’t let myself go like that, not where they can see. Can feel myself straining to run, to hide, to take my wounds away. But I won’t let myself out, not here. Not near the house, Nicahh told me not to. Little by little, I feel myself come back, fists clenched, jaw locked closed, eyes watching the others. Wolf is gone. Nicholas is touching me, rubbing something into my closing wounds. Take a deep breath, focus, heal. The old teachings still work, when I pull myself together, remembering. Look around. He’s gone, it’s quiet. Just Lilly near the lightning-blasted gate.

    She turns as I approach, tensing for a blow. Tells me I can hit her if I need to. I know I can, glaring into her eyes, she knows I can, too. I stare, bristling still from what’s gone before, and she backs down, submits. Challenge won. I can feel happiness start to seep upwards from my stomach as I turn to my kill at last.

    Alexi.

    He’s stealing it again.

    The farker.

    He points at a plate of cheese on the ground as I round on him, calm forgotten. He offers that in place of my kill? For the sake of the garden and the watchers I give him a chance to drop it and leave. He really isn’t very bright. The word ‘no’ has barely left his lips before I’m on him. Thief. The edge of the shed gives a useful surface to bounce his head off until he stops. I glare at the others again, checking that it’s over before hauling the body of the stag onto my shoulder.

    People cluster round Alexi’s beaten form, some trying to help, others to heal as Lilly prevents them. It hurts him. I remember. Magic healing hurts him. Some people take a while to learn. So I stop, look over his wounds and use the magic of my belt to restore him a little. He twitches, moans in pain and that’s good, really good.

    Watching my hands work, the knife slice, and the skin lift. Things are quiet again and I know I’ve helped to feed our family.

    // Thanks to DM Caoimh for yet another good Stag night. Aha ha ha. And to all the rest of you nutters that get so het up over a Demon Deer. Love you all 🙂


  • 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))