Northgate, near the Silverun estate
Winter 77 (2 days after card heist)
Ethan
The two stout, sturdy looking mares pulled the aged carriage to a stop just outside the gates of the Silverunestate. The door was opened by one of the Silverun guards and Luke Bastion stepped out onto the muddy snow lining the cobbled street. To the guard’s surprise, he was followed by four relatively dirty children, each adorned with the telltale satchel of a courier. They sprang from the carriage with the unmistakable jubilance of youth, lacking grace but landing on knees clearly unweathered by age.
The guard, Steinman, was used to receiving Luke by now, even though it had been nearly two months since he’d last seen the man. On all prior occasions the nobleman was alone. Rumor had that was how the man spent most of his days ever since his ‘friend’ Francis Alastor had died a couple years prior; it was said that’s why the man now had white hair, despite being decades too young for it. Still, this failed to explain the bizarre theater makeup or other eccentricities; as far as Steinman was concerned these characteristics could only be attributed to one thing: too much money. A curse many nobilities seemed saddled with, although he’d never consider uttering such a notion aloud.
The four couriers gathered around Luke in a semi-circle, their faces almost entirely wrapped in scarves to shield against the cold. They smelled vaguely like the sewers and Steinman couldn’t help but wonder why the nobleman would be traveling with such creatures – the cabin of the carriage must have reeked.
The guard watched as Luke handed seven or eight silver to each of them – a handsome, but not extravagant, sum for their likes.
“Alright, just as we discussed. The rest will be paid once we meet… or once the job is complete. Whichever is necessary.” He smiled to them. “Alright, off you go!” he said, patting the shoulders of two of them, directing them back down the road.
The guard, still confused, watched as the four youths scattered back towards the city. After a few blocks one split off, then another shortly thereafter. Then they were gone, lost into the city itself.
The guard turned and looked at Luke questioningly. The man smiled back amicably.
“What…” Steinman started, but was cut off.
“Steinman old chap! Good to see you once again! Did I ever tell you the story of the milkmaiden and the randy goat…?” The guard stiffened. Bastion had always been an odd one; Steinman did his best to refrain from talking. Nobility may possess the ability to speak any notion conceived in their addled minds (and suffer whatever consequence their peers deemed appropriate) but the decorum for Silverun guards provided no such luxuries. Bastion frequently pushed the boundaries of good tastes and seemed genuinely ignorant of the guard’s discomfort.
The guard mostly ignored the tale as he halfheartedly checked the familiar nobleman and then his ride, the cabin of which did indeed smell (although thankfully nowhere near as badly as he’d expected). The man was traveling with a large sword wrapped in moldy looking silks the guard didn’t care to touch each tucked inside an instrument case; Steinman wasn’t worried about the nobleman carrying such a weapon onto the grounds. To begin with, if the oddball even attempted to wield it he’d likely be as much a danger to himself as anyone else. And besides, the weapon’s shape looked vaguely ornamental; likely an antique he was interested in showing off.
Afterwards, he helped the excitable man back into his carriage and signaled the gates to be open.
Luke’s carriage made its way beyond the gates and onto the grounds of the nobility. There was still a half hour ride before he would approach the Silverun’s homestead.
Leon Silverun
It has been said that a city breathes as might a woman and that in that breath might you know her secrets — that in her streets and her alleys the people carry the burden of her blood and that an ear pressed upon the stone might know the beating of her heart.
That day the City of Northgate was stirring.
Ethan, or perhaps Luke Bastion as he was, had felt the pulse of it now for days, but it was that particular morning when seemed it most the truth. It was a thing murmured on the lips of peasants and drumming beneath the boots of marching soldiers. It was on the face of a crate half-fastened and dash run of a messenger boy on the slick stone streets.
It was an anxiety that pooled on the low troughs of the city beneath the aqueducts amid the clamor and the cacophony, but high among the mountainside the House Silverun estate seemed somehow to look down upon it all from some great distance far beyond the length of the winding road.
The noise of it all somehow was eaten by the idyllic winter gardens, and that which managed to whisper by was altogether turned away by the large doors that lead into the central building, where inside was only the sound of slow and patient footsteps on polished marbled floors and somewhere perhaps the edge of a cello both present and forgotten.
The House was not without its business, of course, and in tight hallways nobles and merchants whispered to themselves, or shared veiled conversation across the span of a coffee table, lowering voices and casting eyes as Luke Bastion passed.
There was the brief laughter and muted amusement of two half-dressed young nobles slipping from a little used chamber, with only a glance spared to the famed merchant and traveler, before scampering farther down the hall.
There was a large wooden chest which probably contained something quite heavy labored beneath on a palanquin by a number of merchants in the final hallway before reaching Leon Silverun’s private library room—with only a brief glance from one of the servants a bit too strong in the shoulders and with a nose which had been broken more than once, calloused on the knuckles and with quick eyes that didn’t linger on Bastion’s face, but rather went to his belt and his hands.
“Not merchants,” Bishop noted in Ethan’s mind.
The guard waiting at the door was expecting the journeyman and with one hand on a poleaxe, the other pushed the door open. There inside the walls were lined with a wealth of tomes which reached from floor to ceiling and at the far end a wide desk was haloed by a broad and tall window of stained glass.
Leon Silverun, fair and hawkish, reclined in the chair with an expression pensive and one as much Luke as Ethan had come to recognize as unpleasant contemplation, but the expression lightened a bit at the appearance of a more pleasant acquaintance.
“Luke Bastion. The man himself. The good news if you would. You can keep the bad news for yourself today,” he said as he stood from the chair and moved to the small table of bottled alcohol, vaguely gesturing toward a large leather cushioned seat which sat empty.
Ethan
Luke (for Ethan had long since taken it upon himself to become whatever name he assumed) carried the case inside, resting it unassumingly on the floor as he took a seat a on the cushioned chair.
He’d always enjoyed these seats. Unlike some nobles, Leon’s taste allowed for both asceticism and comfort, and the chair itself felt something of a bed formed into a seated position. It was also, he noted, very likely to have a disarming affect on whoever sat there - the chair made it difficult to be uncomfortable. A good tactic for anyone looking to negotiate deals with a softer touch - the chairs in other rooms helped for times when Leon was likely to need the opposite. Or at least, Luke assumed as much. He himself had never been on the receiving end of a hard negotiation with the man. He hoped to keep things this way.
It would be nice, Ethan thought, to have at least one person who thinks they like me.
“Well then we are in luck. For good news is all I bring, and it is news I believe you would like to hear very much!” he said cheerfully.
He turns in his chair to ensure the guard has closed the door and afford the two men privacy.
He continued in a more serious tone, much quieter. “Before we begin, however, I must preface that many homes - even great homes such as this - have rooms that are a bit draftier than others. Before we speak, I’d like to make clear that I believe the news concerns matters that no one besides yourself should benefit from.”
Luke understood that he operated on two levels with Leon - first, as a public house-guest and second as conspirator. The interactions he had as the latter were quite limited by design, and under normal conditions the man was to receive him as the former.
Leon
It was not unusual for the guardsmen to be instructed to wait outside the room, as one could never be too careful when it came to information in a city as complicated as Northgate, and the guise of Luke Bastion was one considered benign enough to be allowed to carry a sword, even one ornamental, into a meeting with the patriarch of the Silverun family.
“This is a place I often prefer to take my time in quiet. I’ve always had a difficult time focusing on the words on a page when there are noises to distract my attention,” the man said, while a slosh of slick amber liquid rolled into two wide glasses—one was offered to Luke Bastion.
The lesser noble would have understood, of course, that this was not a polite gesture. The drink very well might have been poisoned, or been infused with a corrosive acid, or perhaps simply been horrible—in any case it was an exchange of trust and Luke Bastion was expected to step first.
Ethan
Taking the glass, Luke swirls the liquid and began the seemingly casual ritual of appreciating a fine drink. Each step was taken with the relaxed stride of a path both familiar and well traveled. Despite his casual manner, none of the steps were disregarded. Each was followed like the salute between two decorated officers of similar rank and tenure behind closed doors - gestures known through a lifetime of practice but with all the formality stripped away; the formalities respected even as they are abbreviated.
Ethan, on the other hand, took the opportunity to sniff for any of the more obvious poisons he was familiar with. If he was going to drink poison, he’d rather know what kind he was drinking, and how and when it would kill him.
Luke finished by tilting the glass in acknowledgement of the man who offered the drink and took a respectful swallow - something between the tepid sips of a nervous man and the insatiable needs of a raving alcoholic.
Leon
There were a wide variety of poisons which could be rendered from the flora in and around Northgate. There are some that might be accompanied by the subtle sweet of cooking resin or the lingering acrid hints on the palette when breathed and held in the back of the throat. This, however, was the flirtatious notes of crushed walnut and something-that-was-not cinnamon.
Luke Bastion had been poisoned — in the good way.
Leon Silverun took up his own glass from the table’s edge and moved to the far side of the desk, pleased that his guest skipped the formality of a toast, always an unpleasant hitch in the step of a conversation. The man squinted a bit as he stared down onto the city below the tower’s window.
“Today seems to be a day for secrets then.”
Ethan
“In this moment, I find myself with the distinct privilege to offer a phrase I am not blessed enough to often use…” he smiled merrily towards the man’s back.
“Mine is bigger than yours…” he said, cheekily.
He paused for just a moment, trying to feel the temperature in the room, to sense whether his jest was a welcome reprieve or an unwanted waste of time. He continued fairly quickly however. Any obvious signs that he was trying to gauge the man’s response was likely to diminish Leon’s respect; Luke was the lesser of the two men, but there was no need to highlight such differences.
“I’ve been… occupied for several weeks. There is a change in the city. Rumors, rather confirmed, that Sebastian Chance finds himself with a new title… and the company just outside your door is more… colorful than most I can recall. So much can change so quickly.
News is as valuable as any secret in the right hands - it’s all just information dressed up with different titles.” He takes another sip and allows himself to be pleasantly poisoned yet again.
Leon
There was a simplicity to Northgate when viewed through those segments of colored glass, the tangle of thing so unwanting to be tamed sectioned and hued into something of such an elegant predictability so far from the truth.
There was a sound from the man that was not quite a laugh, but something in the beginning of one. There was still lingering a smile on his face when he glanced over his shoulder to Luke Bastion with the quirk of an eyebrow, before he tapped his finger against the edge of his glass and moved to sit against the edge of the broad desk. “Yet to be seen,” he said.
The mention of Sebastian Chance’s name poured a thimble of vinegar in the flavor of their drink. It was a small and subtle thing, hidden behind a practiced pleasantry only out of habit more so than the intent of deceit—Leon Silverun certainly had a better face for cards than that.
“Mm—that one—you do have to credit that one his ingenuity. The upstart has managed to pluck a rather ripe fruit long awaited from a tree long tended, but that seems to be the way of things. It’s a costly inconvenience, but I think our soon-to-be magistrate will learn in time the foundations of this city have endured worse than he.
The inauguration is tomorrow, and as far as I understand I can put off having to accept that particular reality until then,” the man said with an obvious desire to conclude that topic.
“As for the other, I hope they didn’t give you any trouble,” he spoke in reference to the men Luke Bastion would have likely passed in the hallway, an easy assumption to make, but Silverun didn’t seem to regard that topic as particularly important. Rather, his eyes were drawn toward the linen wrapped curiosity that had accompanied the noble.
He gestured toward it with his drinking-hand and the perk of an eyebrow. “Speaking of trouble… if that is the horn of the Gray Wilder Beast you spoke of during your last visit you may be staying for dinner.”
Ethan
The familiar smile of the bantering noble first grew in recollection of his tale that was, until then, forgotten before faltering; his face sliding into an expression unusually void of merriment.
For a moment Ethan experienced a strange confluence of his separate lives and separate characters, each reality crashing into one another as he recalled the stories from his real life that helped inspire the fiction. And for just a moment he recalled, once again, that most of the people who mattered in the creation of those stories were gone forever.
He allowed himself that moment of reverie. Like any practiced actor, he realized that the audience experienced the show far different from the man on stage and they only realized a line was forgotten if the performer let on. These were the moments of stage fright that even the most experienced men and women seemed to have - something Ethan learned from Talith’s acting troupe friends. Recurring nightmares of being on stage without knowing the play.
But none of this bother him. The best characters, he decided, were those that evolved. In the closing week of the life of Luke Bastion, he would regret not giving the character a fitting farewell.
“No,” he says, his eyes never leaving the sword below him. “It’s evidence of the rumor that will find its way to the city by week’s end.”
“There is a vacuum at the top of the Swan ranks. With this absence of leadership, it’s expected that the Barony will once again depend on the Great Noble Houses to maintain order and continue with their contributions as they have in years past, while the army focuses on recouping their loses.”
Ethan looks into the nobleman’s eyes. “It’s done, Leon.”
Leon
There was a slow gravity which began to settle into the room, making somehow more heavy the fine cushions and broad legs of the chair and the wide stained wood of the broad desk that dominated the room among the watching shelves of many books.
It was over the course of the moment that the humor drained from the face of Leon Silverun and as the small allusions of Luke Bastion’s words and the implications began to lay the pieces of a puzzle that wanted to be solved until there came only one conclusion.
There was the most slight narrowing of the man’s eyes in an expression of intensity more so than suspicion, of a focus that narrowed into something acute and perilous. The man spared a glance toward the door in the same way that Luke Bastion had done at the beginning of the conversation, before glancing to the nobleman again and then fixing onto the linen.
“Show me.”
Ethan
He moved a petrified coaster closer and set his glass on the desk.
Luke unwrapped the linens while Ethan made certain to hide the sigil, wrapping the flag back upon itself as the sword was revealed. He would save this revelation for later… if it was needed.
Setting the flag beside him he picked up the sword that already felt like a part of him, its heft familiar despite being a weapon he was less adept to wield than its former owner had been.
He stood from his chair to raise the weapon by its hilt, the blade pointed down towards the floor.
“The Wolf is no more,” he said, only the slightest hint of sadness tingeing his voice.
Leon
The man studied the sword with eyes somehow more blue in that moment than perhaps they had been before, a thing akin to glacial ice when the sun was low across the water. There was a twitch of the muscles beneath his eye and they drifted away from the sword toward nothing in particular—drifting and darting only to never quite find what they seemed to be seeking.
It was a thing Ethan had seen before, even if Luke had not—the careful calculations of a quickly changing extrapolation. Leon Silverun tapped his finger against the side of his glass before he set it down onto the desk, without regard to a coaster, and slid the glass an inch to the left. The man’s hand drifted to a small square of writing paper and straightened it into better alignment with the angle of the desk’s corner without so much as looking at it. The moment lingered before his eyes moved and fixed onto Luke Bastion’s own.
“What of the Grand Inquisitor?”
Ethan
There were several things Ethan wanted to say as a reply. He wanted to tell the man he’d run her through the chest with sword he was now holding. He wanted to offer some witticism about the position being open, but not certain Leon was entirely qualified for the job.
But he didn’t. Because more than anything, he wanted to collect what favor he could and leave the city to its fate. Every hour spent here was another hour Kelwin had Danica and Ethan wanted nothing more than to find his horse, find his friend, and find that man. Preferably in that order - Danica was prettier, but the horse was nicer… to Ethan, anyway.
He shook his head gently. “Permanently departed.”
Leon
The words fell from the lips of Luke Bastion and into their place in a mosaic of circumstance with the singular clarity of a polished glass tile. It didn’t take long for the man’s eyes to drift from Luke Bastion’s own, but a moment seemed to drift and wait in the air for a while longer, before it escaped with a slight noise of breath through Leon Silverun’s nostrils.
There was the slightest shake of his head and the tip of his tongue brushed back of his front teeth, before all the tension seemed to flood out of him with a slow breath from his lungs. The man nodded to himself for just a moment, before glancing back toward Luke Bastion with a raise of his eyebrows and the edge of a smile, but one laced with something in part joy and also in some way a lamented closure. “It seems this then concludes our business.”
Leon Silverun studied Luke Bastion’s face in a new light—the arrangement had always been precisely such a thing as this, but even behind such a grand conspiracy the belief in the reality of its success was not entirely tangible until the moment itself.
Ethan
“Yes… well, almost.” Luke started, carefully choosing his phrasing as he began correcting the man’s assertion.
“I’ve taken great pains and suffered some resentments, but the extent of your family’s involvement is known entirely to me alone. This is true of most of the other Houses as well.
“However, the work is not complete. The final piece of our business is cleaning the slate to ensure nothing is left to investigate or interrogate, leaving others to merely to speculate.
“I am one of those pieces. I’d ask a few small trinkets of supplies and one or two recommendations…
“Regardless, the final act is for me to vanish the pieces and myself.
“Because of this, it is extremely unlikely the two of us will ever speak again, Lord Silverun. Soon you will know my name only as a man you once knew. A man who made good on his word, upheld his end of important affairs… and occasionally entertained you with good company.”
Leon
The Silverun Patriarch watched Luke Bastion for a moment longer before he moved from the edge of the desk and pulled open a drawer and within it another drawer. “Well, in that case, while I understand the funds necessary for your journey were paid in advance, but I believe there is call for something more—as I will never have the opportunity to thank these friends of yours myself, I would have you deliver this on my behalf.”
The man produced a box, long and low, something like a cigar box. It was heavy enough that he lifted it with two hands and studied the face of it for a moment, before he moved and set it on the edge of the desk beside Luke Bastion’s glass. “There is a long forgotten tradition I think perhaps worthy of this moment. One not observed, so far as I have read, in quite some time.”
Leon Silverun opened the ornate box to reveal six ingots of polished metal. They were each nondescript and did not bear the marking of the mint nor the house responsible for their mining and smelting, nor that of the Barony of Isendel.
The first five were rather obvious—copper, bronze, iron, silver, and gold represented Five Great Houses of Northgate, but the sixth was a curiosity set against the others—a solid ingot of a metal the color of which neither Luke Bastion or Ethan Fairchild had ever seen before—a metal the color of which he cannot quite describe.
“Once long ago there was a House called Jorendon and an old debt long owed now is paid,” the man said in a way that was not entirely to Luke Bastion, before he closed the case and tapped the top of it.
“We part ways here for now, Luke Bastion.”
It was here the man would be expected of course to leave, but as he began the nobleman before him did not seem quite to be listening. He interrupted, lifting his eyes to the lesser nobleman and plucked his glass of the table before raising it.
“It is seldom a man of my responsibilities is allowed the privilege of a friend. I have enjoyed your stories and for what you and your friends have done I believe your friend Francis rests now a bit easier—to friends we have lost and those still more we will,” he said. “When you return to Northgate I would like to hear the stories you bring with you and hear of your great adventures. I look forward to that day, my friend.”
Leon Silverun did not wait for Luke Bastion to reach for his own glass, but drank instead from his with a hearty swallow, before blowing a breath across his tongue and sucking in through his nose. The empty glass was slid onto his desk, before he did a thing that was not done between a greater and a lesser noble—and extended his hand to Luke Bastion.
Ethan
Luke considered reaching for his own glass left resting on the table behind Leon to then mimic the actions of his host, but that would leave the nobleman standing awkwardly in front of him with his hand extended while Luke reach around him. And while this would perhaps amuse both the character and the actor in some small way, Ethan was genuinely grateful. For the first time in a very long time, to simply reach out and shake the hand of person displaying a genuine sense of respect. Ethan had long ago stopped seeking such acknowledgements, but was surprised at the satisfaction some outward sign of success felt.
Here was a man who thought highly enough of something Ethan helped to accomplish that he would break with a lifetime of conditioning to offer a sign of sincere gratitude for the partnership that was ending, having benefited each of them.
Ethan realized this might be the first success he could remember that didn’t involve murder. Well, sure, he was lying, pretending to be a different person. And yes, technically the work he was being thanked for still involved murder… but… well, shit.
What nice lives most normal people must lead…
The handshake ended and Luke begins to make his way towards the door, leaving a room for the last time, on his way to exit from the house for the last time, when he turns to look at the man he will be speaking to for the last time:
“Say… I don’t suppose you would happen to have the name of a reliable and discreet taxidermist by any chance, would you?”
Northgate
The streets of Northgate were crowded and busy more by the time the warmest candle of the day had come some time later, and the murmuring tide of The Farrow washed upon the tangled ravines of the district’s tallest buildings, where mingled the scents of delicious meats, spices, and perfumes against the crush of velvet and glinting jewelry which all in some way called perhaps to the eye of a younger boy some years ago—and Ethan might have caught a glimpse of a young pick-pocket lift coin purse from an unsuspecting nobleman, before darting off into the thick of the crowd.
There was here the sense that the great stone gears of the frozen city were turning, and across the facade of the House of Chance a great banner was being slowly and aligned while a workman shouted directions to the crew above. A column of Painted Swan Soldiers with faces too young and too old, wary and weathered, marched their way toward the southern portion of the city. The market criers wove a din that pierced in rhythm above the swell of the market goers and the banking of a blacksmith’s hammer.
Ethan
Ethan moved through the crowd as a fish through water, gliding through the ebb and flow of people. It was funny how much more comfortable he was here, lost in a sea of faces and bodies, than out in untamed wilderness. The sounds and smells of the city were a familiar territory; a territory that, very soon, he would once again be leaving. He wondered if he’d make it to Galoring. If that city truly was as large as he’d heard, dwarfing all others by comparison. He wondered if he would take to that place as he had this one and Last Harbor, or if the sheer scale of it would overwhelm him.
He relished the idea of it as he idly slapped a pickpocket in the face.
Yes, he would miss this place once they were back on the road. Or worse, on a ship. He’d never been on a ship before. He imagined it would be terrible.
He stopped by the stall of one of his favorite butchers. They only served a few select portions of pig here, specially cooked and prepared with sinfully delicious spices. The rest was sold elsewhere.
He spared a moments thought for Hampton as he exchanged coins with the vendor, but decided that given a chance the pet would resentfully acknowledge that he was, in fact, delicious when prepared in such a way.
Ethan laughed at his own morbid thoughts as he bit into savory meats threaded with a small wooden stake and continued gliding through the waters of humanity, leaving a small exchange of coin in his wake.
Eventually, his hands full of various cooked animals and vegetables, Ethan moves away from the crowds to a bench beneath a tree. He sits relishing the different tastes, smiling childishly as he eats without hesitation or manners.
Northgate
It was a tree which had stood as long as many of the buildings in the area, a thing petrified by the cold some time ago and ringed by round stones on a small plot of frozen and inhospitable soil. It provided in some way a sense of respite from the throng of the crowd. Ethan her perhaps seen young lovers there beneath it, but on that day it was conveniently empty and provided a nice place to sit.
It was half way into a mouth full of the succulent pork that he heard it somehow rise above the other noises of the flowing market river— the whiny of a horse, a smear of impossible black against the oppressive gray, and the stumble of soldiers who tried to lead the animal.
Just like that there he was—Vengeance—he was there as sure as the snow covered the stones, as the new strange imported spices of the pork clung to Ethan’s tongue, as sure as he felt the subtle swelling on the sides of his neck just beneath his ears, as sure his vision began to blur just a bit—as sure as the blood dripped from his nostril against his upper lip and slid down across his chin.
“Ethan…” Bishop said from somewhere far away.
There was the thick clinging of the salted pork on his tongue, the subtle undercurrent of saccharin under the layers of savory and the slight bluish after-image that haloed the black horse struggling against the ropes and the soldiers.
“Ethan! The pouch! Your hip!”
Not nightshade. Not the pork. He would have tasted that. Hemlock or winter’s scar would have been easy to smell in the drink. It was the blue that gave it away and the time it took to set in—it had been hours since the drink on the Silverun Estate—indigo mirage-bloom.
Ethan Fairchild had been poisoned—in the bad way.
Leon Silverun
The blood glistened on the back of his hand beneath the light perfect and sanguine, before it was joined by another drop just a bit beside the first.
“…the allocation of additional funds to the sum of sixty five hundred pieces of gold was committed to the acquisition of the the property, but our scribes suggest that… ah,” the scribe-servant paused with a slight frown turning his mouth. “Pardon me, Lord, but… you… your…”
Leon Silverun stared for a moment more at the blood that sit on the back of his own hand tinged with a swaying edge of blue and felt the wet against his nostril. He gestured vaguely and dismissively at the servant. “That will be all, Reginald. I’d like to be left alone for the remainder of the candle. Someone dear to me has died.”
He began to pour a glass of something clear that smelled of licorice against the sound of the servant’s departing footsteps, before the Silverun Patriarch moved to stand at the window, looking down onto a city of Northgate smeared in all the many hues.
Ethan
Ethan’s had to fight to prevent his body from panicking; his mind was thankfully more cooperative. If anything his thoughts were a little too calm. He absently recalled (and then forgot) something about delirium as his mind began sequencing the symptoms like an unsympathetic doctor.
…next comes numbness of the extremities… then a brief period of muscle soreness… by then your throat will have swollen shut and you should pass out, asphyxiate, and die.
Stupid mistake, Ethan. Should have blackmailed him into collusion until you got out of the city like you’d planned. Gotta admit though, he’s good at the game…
FOCUS! he shouted to himself, as he stumbled forward, half blinded, following some baseless instinct that getting to Vengeance would somehow save him. In a startling display of self-preservation, his hands find their way to his frosted pouch where they draw a cool glass container. Ethan smells colorfruits.
He opened his mouth to speak but nothing happened. He heard a humming sound come from somewhere in his throat and he suspected it was his voice, although he couldn’t be certain.
He staggered into a figure or shape and nearly lost his balance as his legs (pants?) continued to carry him towards the large black shape that seemed galloping and nice. He’s carrying something important but he’s unsure what it is.
Suddenly his hands were gone and something struck his face as he moved his wrist towards his eyes to find them.
Spinning now, the world tilting in a funny way.
The voice of a friend was saying something far back in his mind but it seemed irrelevant. The black shape thing was very close now.
Almost home. Almost.
Northgate
“Ethan! Quit talking. Stay calm. Listen to me! The potion! Pick it up! Blueberries. Fucking blueberries!” Bishop’s voice came from somewhere at the end of a long alley and beneath the water. The faces of strangers moved as kept beneath the surface of a lake Ethan Fairchild had known long ago — shapes stained in blue and smeared against something impossible and black as a night sky in a field outside of a small town.
Almost Home
He felt the brush of strangers as he waded into the stream of the market crowd, the impact of a stranger against his shoulder and then another and the squinted faces of noblemen twisted and smearing, embarrassed for the drunk. There was a wagon that passed and wheels against stone, other horses, but the wrong horses. There the soft laughter of a woman that for a moment seemed familiar, her skin made lavender by the poison as the sky above began to turn.
Almost Home
There was the brush of a hand by chance against his own, and the soft chime of metal as something struck the band on his finger and in that tone was a tale of two rings.
It was a sound that rung throughout his mind and roared up from the ground and poured through the city streets—the sound of memories that belonged to someone else.
There was for a moment the feeling of movement smooth as silk through the crowds of the city with the ease Ethan had only known when he was at his very best. There was the cutting chill of mountain wind and a temple frozen and forgotten and the hunger of a bear that stalked behind.
There was the spread of wings gargantuan and white and winter and a cold which had been waiting since a time before men spoke words.
There was a city in the sky and there was flying so swift across the Slithering Sands. Running. Running faster than anyone had ever run before.
Memories that did not belong to him began to erode from Ethan’s mind at their edges like ripples on water, as the sea of the crowd spun around him, and for a moment he caught the glimpse of eyes ordinary and brown with a face twisted in surprise and confusion as a girl with a wisp of brown hair glanced at his hand and then to her own, before staring at him with an expression severe and dangerous—and where echoed the edge of a voice crumbling at its edges, still and swift as shadow, quiet as the laughing wind, a voice for another in another time and another place.
“Salizard is with you, and together we…”
A stranger passed between them and she was gone.
Indigo Mirage-Bloom was a poison used in the barony of Kharakhan and often when one accused of conspiring with malevolent spirits was put to the question. The poison is one so lethal that it said that only one touched by demonic influence can survive the smallest drop.
Ethan was not sure when the ground had moved to press against his back, but he was certain that should he not cling to the stones of the street he would certainly slide down the side of the world and fall into the sky.
“Ethan! Ethan! Get up!” Bishop’s voice reached out from some place so incredibly far way, tangled in the sound of a black horse and the shouting of soldiers and the screaming of noblemen on the street.
He might have thought at first that the shouting was for him—for a poor drunkard who had fallen into the road, but such things did not upset the people of Northgate. It was only then, behind the layers of it all that he began to the bells ringing in the city—bells that rang for only one reason.
A magistrate of Northgate, Sebastian Chance, has died.
…but that didn’t matter, there was no time for that kind of thing, because Ethan Fairchild was dying and the only thing that could save him would a miracle… or witchcraft.
…and as Ethan stared up at the twisting gray of a perfect sky, he thought for just a moment, perhaps at the end, that he saw the face of an old friend rushing to kneel there above him, but it was only the Remnant of something that had once been, because then he remembered.
Bax is dead.
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