Brilliant Disguise 27/7 Sorrel, abs, fiends and a cowboy
Jul 30, 2022 12:04:30 GMT
Lykksie, Velania Kalugina, and 3 more like this
Post by stephena on Jul 30, 2022 12:04:30 GMT
Representin' for the rangers all across the world (still)
Hittin' them monsters with the low blow's girl (still)
Takin' my time to perform them feats
And I still got love for these three, F, Z and V.
Still Sorrel
Still Sorrel album cover art, author's own collection
The sun was still new and the air fresh and clean when Velania walked out onto the steps of Selûne’s temple and gazed towards the Angelbark.
She stopped a passing acolyte. “Morania, could you find Sorrel for me? I think today is…”
“Just coming Velania,” Sorrel bounded up the last of the stairs to stand beside the cleric, panting a little.
“…the day,” Velania turned and regarded her thoughtfully. “Some people might find that creepy, but I think it’s sweet,” she said finally. “Are you ready?”
“Born ready,” Sorrel nodded.
“Right, but are you ready now?”
“Yes, also ready now. I have a packed lunch and everything.”
“I think we need some tunes,” Velania turned back to survey the square. “It’s a long walk. That bard – you know him?”
But Sorrel was already half way down the steps calling “Felix!”
Velania’s attention was caught by Zola trotting across the square on her elk. The drow paladin was fitted out for a journey and carrying a wicker basket with a red and white cloth laid over the top. As she clip-clopped up to Velania, the aasimar caught the smell of freshly baked scones.
Before she could ask, Sorrel bounded up the final step – so much bounding from one ranger – and touched Zola’s shoulder awkwardly as she dismounted.
“Are you OK Zola?”
“I’m fine, fine, absolutely fine,” Zola’s voice started high and almost reached the upper limit of human hearing by the time she’d finished.
Suddenly they were hugging, a little awkwardly but with tangible affection, then they pulled apart and Sorrel met Zola’s eyes. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you,” her mouth twisted. “I’m not good at… people…. But I know a little of how you must be feeling. I mean, I didn’t kill Sylvia in single combat, but still.”
“What actually is this, if you don’t mind?” Felix was clearly baffled at being summoned to watch a cuddle.
“An'Ahkrim is caught in the prime and can’t go further,” Velania explained as they strapped on their packs and started down the temple steps. “Because he switched sides he’s not automatically an angel. He has to reckon with himself. I think he needs… something. Jasathriel wants us.”
“I should get some beer,” Felix nodded thoughtfully.
---
The Angelbark was limitless, luminous, and flourishing. Its canopy was eclipsed by beech, asp, and hemlock, cottonwood, birch, and juniper, their leaves and branches allowing for just enough light to pass down for a flood of ferns to sprout in the flat, fertile ground.
The journey passed with Zola and Felix riffing on a few classics and the party singing along. Zola purified the scones every day with spiritual rituals and Velania did her best to follow a set of instructions on a small sheet of parchment.
“Do you think that rock looks like an old man?” she asked Sorrel at one point.
“What sort of directions are these?” Felix grimaced. “Where did you get them?”
“They flew in through my window,” Velania blushed slightly. “I think I’m being tested.”
Sorrel doubted this was a test. It felt more like classic military jamming tactics, throwing informational chaff at a route to keep the destination safe using a journey so complex it was impossible to remember.
--
“Is Jackal picking a weird meeting point just to be an arsehole?” Zola ventured after a they had descended a particularly obscure path hidden by bushes that might have looked like three old ladies if viewed from an unfeasibly specific angle and were setting up camp, lighting a fire and pulling cups of ale from Felix’s quarter keg, chilled by his bardic magic.
"You've met Jackal right?" Sorrel sighed.
“I have,” Zola nodded.
"He's definitely doing it to be an arsehole. Bless him."
"Yeah, I thought so," Zola looked around the forest. "Weirdly I think I crossed from the Feywild here once, several decades ago. Maybe before there even was Daring Heights. When all was unspoiled beauty."
“I prefer the city,” Felix had a habit of underscoring his conversation with little runs on his guitar, as if he lived in a musical and was about to summon a team of dancers. “In the city, you can find an ale house and eat your fill, talk with your friends about the vagaries of life.”
“Eating too much makes you lethargic,” Sorrel shook her head. “It’s dangerous.”
“I meant at the end of a hard day,” Felix pointed out.
“The third most dangerous time,” Sorrel shrugged. “The best time to take a mark is in their sleep, then dawn, then in the evening after a heavy meal.”
Felix stopped his delicate runs and started strumming softly. “Risk is part of life’s rich tapestry,” Felix nodded as he strummed. “There will always be bad times – but they help us appreciate the good times.”
“Life is pain, Felix,” Sorrel sighed. “Anyone who tries to tell you differently is selling something.”
The stars were coming out slowly. For a moment Sorrel could only see five in the sky and almost panicked until the others winked into view.
From off in the distance, she heard the crunching of one pair of boots making a steady approach. She listened hard.
The others heard and rose to their feet, moving out of the light of the campfire and towards the sound of the oncoming noise. Whoever they were, they were making no attempt at stealth, for better or worse.
Sorrel armed and primed a heavy hand crossbow that looked like a child’s toy but could take an adult’s head clean off, then slipped it under her cloak.
“Sorrel,” Velania had noticed. “Really? What if it’s Jasathriel?”
“It’s not,” Sorrel shrugged. “Jasathriel never walks up to you with his boots crunching. He appears silently behind you and insults you.”
“Check out the fucking brains on Darkfire,” Jasathriel’s voice came from behind them. He was sitting by the fire, his expression moving rapidly from scornful to weary. “It’s An'Ahkrim, obviously, you crack fucking team of super elite commando detectives. Heaven help us all.”
Sorrel’s eyes met Velania’s for a fraction of a second and a thousand stories were told in that moment.
And An'Ahkrim appeared in front of them. The same commanding presence, but muted, so he looked like a remarkably charismatic lumberjack.
“I would ask if I could join you but as you’ve invited me…” he said.
“This is so awkward,” Zola breathed.
“I apologise, I’ve lost my arcane abilities and immortality,” An'Ahkrim briefly seemed shy.
“Would you like a scone?” Zola held her basket out. “You look adorable.”
“And you’re wildly patronising,”
He took one anyway and gazed meaningfully at the keg while Felix filled a couple of extra mugs and passed them to the two newcomers.
After a deep draught, An'Ahkrim sat on a log near the fire. “You wanted to see me? I promise I’m not killing babies.”
“That’s what a person who kills babies would say,” Zola pointed out.
“Could I ask - why didn’t you kill me? In Hell, I mean,” Sorrel leaned forwards, her brow furrowed.
An'Ahkrim chugged the last of his ale and asked for a refill. Jasathriel downed his and indicated his empty mug as well.
"The atmosphere here is so weird," Zola muttered to herself.
An'Ahkrim drained his second cup in one long swallow. “I made a choice,” he said eventually. “That’s how it all begins You can’t expect to wake up one day and be changed. I’m starting to think and feel slowly… I didn’t just wake up and think - killing babies is wrong.”
“Did you actually kill babies?” Felix looked shocked. “I thought you were joking.”
An'Ahkrim turned, his face granite. “I was a powerful fiend in the Heralds of Blade and Ash.”
Felix paused, took this in. “Oh…”
An'Ahkrim’s stance shifted subtly as if bracing for combat, but Felix started playing a soft melody whilst staring thoughtfully at a tree.
“When it comes to measuring the morality of an action by its intention or its outcome I benefitted from the outcome, so we’re good,” Sorrel nodded. “Thank you.”
“Why did you join the Heralds in the first place,” Zola spoke up. “And why leave?”
“There’s so many questions you aren’t asking,” An'Ahkrim shook his head. “Why did I join? Glory, violence, bloodshed, Shar. Righteousness. Our version. I went willingly.”
“Did Rahmiël sleep with you too?” the drow paladin looked nervous.
“We all slept with each other,” An'Ahkrim drawled, a slight sardonic twitch at the corner of his mouth as he met Zola’s eyes. “All of us.”
Zola looked flustered.
“My reasons for leaving are more relevant,” An'Ahkrim turned towards Velania. “Within me there was a growing darkness that I didn’t enjoy. A fear that I didn’t savour. The first time that was illuminated was someone like you.” He nodded at the young Aasimar. “Her duality was even more inexplicable. Demonic blood yet holy. I almost thought I’d hallucinated. Then I met you and there was one more.”
“The angel with devil's horns,” Velania gave a half smile. “Seraphina.”
“She was born with a choice,” An'Ahkrim explained. “She makes that choice every day and I think the choice is both. The possibility of a choice appeared before me which was the first choice. The desire to believe is to believe.”
“If you always do what you’ve always done you’ll only get what you’ve always got,” Felix nodded wisely.
“The question is,” Zola’s eyes were boring into him. “What do you want?”
“First I want a soul,” An'Ahkrim said softly. Sorrel frowned and reached for her crossbow. “I mean my own, Darkfire. I’m growing a moral compass. If I ever achieve a soul I will have to spend years beyond years to forgive myself.”
“It’s going to hurt and take a long time,” Jasathriel was clearly trying to be patient. “If he succeeds he will be inherently good in a way I’ll never be. I fell down. He’s falling upwards.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Zola said eventually.
“Zola, I’m a celestial being – I can see four colours you can’t.”
“What do they look like?”
“How can I describe them to you Zola?”
“Crayons?” Zola hauled out a pack of 36 and some parchment.
Velania cut in as fast as she could. “One of the reasons I wanted to find you was that I had some sense of this,” she spoke rapidly, then turned to An'Ahkrim. “I won’t enter the discussion on souls. It’s a complex topic. But you made a choice. Put yourself at risk. A world of trouble. Do you need help?”
“He does,” Jasathriel nodded.
“Well,” Sorrel turned towards An'Ahkrim. “I have a debt to pay…”
“Right, Sorrel, shall I go find an owlbear and you can kill it and we’re even?” An'Ahkrim sighed.
“I don’t just kill,” Sorrel was indignant. “I do other things.”
It was so quiet she could hear beetles rustling across the forest floor.
“I mean, mainly I kill, admittedly, but I’ve had stuff to... well, kill. It’s been busy. But there’s been weeks I haven’t killed anything.”
“So now I’m being told I need help by.. my jailer?” An'Ahkrim ventured.
Zola seemed to tune out and she started scribbling on some parchment with crayons.
"It's the Heralds," she whispered to Sorrel. "Including An'Ahkrim."
“Nice abs,” Sorrel nodded. “An'Ahkrim does not skip leg day.”
She looked up to significant stares passing between Velania and An'Ahkrim.
“We’re all choosing,” Velania said, finally.
Astonishingly An'Ahkrim seemed shy. “I would appreciate the help…”
Jasathriel took Zola’s crayons and started drawing elaborate concentric circles on a sheet of paper using only the blues.
“So,” he began, holding up kaleidoscope shades of cobalt, sapphire, azure and ultramarine all cascading over each other as if in motion. “This is a schematic diagram of virtue, souls, morality and the bitruncated tesseract of pan-dimensional existence… it’s a slightly anthropcentric concept of agency, I admit, but whaddya going to do? It’s crayons.”
An'Ahkrim bit into a scone with the carelessness of a creature who’d heard this speech a few times before.
“Now, you can see here,” Jasathriel tapped the paper. “This here’s your immaterial essence. Standard. Over here, and you’ll notice the positioning of the two, that’s the intersection of reason, spirit and appetite, more your de anima as you might find in… well, you. Now chummy here,” and he nodded at An'Ahkrim as he tapped a different part of the paper. “He’s more on the dualistic pluralism route into the transcendental paramatman or free over-soul and you can follow the folds of this cross-polytope decacross to get a pretty good idea.”
They stared at him, faces wrestling with the vastness of creation.
“So…” Sorrel began, then drifted off.
Silence.
“It’s slightly more complicated than I thought,” she finished eventually.
“Let me be really fucking basic then - you can see the whole sheet is blue, yes?” Jasathriel waved his hand over it vaguely. “Let’s pretend that blue is special. Everyone is special in one way. You’re born souls. You’re mortals. You don’t realise how special you are. And yet’s not the same blue. You are also special in lots of different ways. You forget that most of the farmers and merchants don’t do the shit you do. Very few people have magic. Why are you so keen on not being special?”
“You’re saying the average merchant wouldn’t have an archangel advising them on investments?” Zola’s brow furrowed.
“Are you a merchant Zola?” Jasathriel sighed.
“No,” Zola sounded a little wistful. “I can barely count.”
Suddenly Felix’s softly picked tune found new life. The archaic Lydian harmonies hung on the air. Slowly, slowly, the melody unfolded. It was transparent, pure, and crystalline, like a tropical sea, a mountain lake. Water on water, calm sliding over calm, a counterpoint of serenities.
The time quickened. A new melody leapt and bounded, but over earthly mountains. Then the slow melody joined it, was doubled; it was as though heaven had suddenly and impossibly become more heavenly, had passed from achieved perfection into perfection yet deeper and more absolute. It quivered, it was alive, it seemed to grow into an almost passionate serenity. The miraculous paradox of eternal life and eternal repose was musically realized. …
Jasathriel’s voice danced between the notes, at once part of the music and distinct from it, his gruff tones still throbbing but somehow sounding like a mother’s tears.
“Velania doesn’t think she’s wise,” Jasathriel’s words were felt as much as heard. “Sorrel thinks she’s a weapon. That bard doesn’t realise he’s solved four equations that the heavens have been struggling to resolve for half of eternity while he’s drunk and playing a song…”
He let his words sink in.
Sorrel sat on the forest floor and drifted for a while.
The places she went were dark and hollow. She walked midnight halls with the spirits of those she had known, those who had stood with her but were gone, their names etched in stone on vast walls that stretched into forever. A thousand years passed in a fleeting second.
The House creed echoed in her mind.
Everything has its purpose.
There is a time to be born, and a time to die.
A time to laugh; a time to dance; a time to love and a time to heal.
A time to weep; a time to mourn; a time to hate and a time to kill.
For those who serve without fear or favour there is a time for war, and a time for peace.
Both these masters serve the same.
To understand this is our duty.
There is a place for everything, and everything has a place.
We serve because we have our place.
And so, we serve until death.
She blinked and realised Velania and Jasathriel were deep in conversation about families and mentors and leaders and angels.
Events moved in their words beyond Sorrel’s understanding.
Then Felix stopped playing.
“What the fuck was that song?” Sorrel asked him. A light in his eyes died away.
“Just… I don’t know… it came to me. How did it go?”
Sorrel tried to find the notes and they wouldn’t come.
“I don’t know,” she was relieved and yet heartbroken.
An'Ahkrim swallowed the last mouthful of the last scone, washed it down with the dregs of his pint and rose to his feet.
“There’s no manual for this, no map,” he began. “I have to exist in uncertainty because that is the crucible in which I will be shaped. I have to keep making choices. I have to exist aimlessly to understand what it is to have a goal. That said, the motivations behind my choices and my deeds don’t matter if the result is good. So I remain here. I build my log cabin. I exist. I drift. I seek the light of purpose.”
“You’re on your way to glory but right now you sound like me,” Sorrel scratched her nose thoughtfully. “Can I come and hang out sometimes? While you’re in the scumball stage. No killing. Not even any talking. Just scumball companionship until you reach your next stage and grow beyond me.”
“Having two sociopathic killers hanging out together is either the worst or the best thing for both of us,” An'Ahkrim almost smiled. “But sure, why not? I’ve never hung out before. There was always so much to do before. The Blood War took up a lot of time, then there was the tempting, the vengeance, the torture and so much admin. Once I’ve finished the cabin I’ve got no plans for the first time since the fall of Asmodeus.”
“Well, I think that about wraps that up,” Jasathriel seemed pleased. “Remember, Darkfire, in the gathering of the arcane comes new understanding and that which was may never be again.”
Sorrel thought for a second.
“That just doesn’t help me at all, but I appreciate the thought.”
But Jasathriel was gone.
---
They packed up and were about to throw earth on the fire when Sorrel heard the unmistakable click and rasp of crossbows loading. Six, she figured, and all around them.
“One of you has something that I want,” a voice came out of the darkness. She had never heard it before. “No need to do anything foolish. We have no quarrel with any of you.”
Felix waved his hands in arcane patterns but whatever spell he was trying to cast fizzled out.
The tip of a crossbow carved with softly glowing arcane runes was suddenly visible in the firelight pointing at Velania’s head.
“This one is going to give me what is mine – the gauntlet. She has it. I can feel it. It is mine.”
Sorrel measured the distance between her and Velania. She assumed her fey step would be blocked if Felix couldn’t cast, and she doubted she could move fast enough to put herself between Velania and the crossbow.
And if she did, what of the other five?
If anyone harmed one hair on Velania’s head, they would regret it for every second of their very short and very eventful life.
“I have the gauntlet – step into the light.” Velania pulled a gauntlet from her backpack and laid it on the ground. A sigil was glowing on its cold steel.
“Wonderful. Gracias.” A spirit hand materialised and pulled the gauntlet back into the darkness.
“Could I ask your name?” Velania’s voice was strong and proud.
A man stepped into the firelight, very pale, with heavy, dark rings under his eyes.
Something about him troubled Sorrel.
“Zola…” she whispered. “That scent of undead thing you have…”
Zola sniffed and nodded. “He’s undead.”
“I have no intention to cause undue harm,” the surprisingly handsome creature smiled. “That fiend is making progress. Why should I interfere in that? I have plenty of smites. None of them for him.”
Zola recoiled. “Smites?” she whispered to Sorrel. “Undead paladin?”
“Why so much artillery?” Velania sounded puzzled rather than challenging.
“I have already died. I have no intention of dying again."
"Where will you go now?"
"The hands of the revenant do not rest. We go where we are needed."
His voice cracked, he stepped back into the shadows and the crossbows were gone.
Sorrel searched the darkness but they had vanished completely.
Zola shivered. "The hand of the revenant... the prophecy of Themis."
"What?" Sorrel turned towards her. "I am done with prophecies."
She paused.
"But given that, what did she say?"
Zola recited like she was reading something out in class.
"I see;
The bonds of the Prime Material
The foundations of reality
The balance of existence
Coming apart.
I see;
Fractal beings of power Clawing at themselves and at each other
The shards, sharper than any knife
Burrowing under the skin.
Behold the pale riders!
The midnight sentries are coming;
Their watch is far from over.
The call will go out among them,
As unrest forces
The Hand of the Revenant.”
If a bird had flown over the clearing it would have seen a small party of four standing alone around a fire.
To the west, much further west, it would have seen a lone figure on a white horse with the moon shining down on them as if it was trying to reach out and touch them.
Hittin' them monsters with the low blow's girl (still)
Takin' my time to perform them feats
And I still got love for these three, F, Z and V.
Still Sorrel
Still Sorrel album cover art, author's own collection
The sun was still new and the air fresh and clean when Velania walked out onto the steps of Selûne’s temple and gazed towards the Angelbark.
She stopped a passing acolyte. “Morania, could you find Sorrel for me? I think today is…”
“Just coming Velania,” Sorrel bounded up the last of the stairs to stand beside the cleric, panting a little.
“…the day,” Velania turned and regarded her thoughtfully. “Some people might find that creepy, but I think it’s sweet,” she said finally. “Are you ready?”
“Born ready,” Sorrel nodded.
“Right, but are you ready now?”
“Yes, also ready now. I have a packed lunch and everything.”
“I think we need some tunes,” Velania turned back to survey the square. “It’s a long walk. That bard – you know him?”
But Sorrel was already half way down the steps calling “Felix!”
Velania’s attention was caught by Zola trotting across the square on her elk. The drow paladin was fitted out for a journey and carrying a wicker basket with a red and white cloth laid over the top. As she clip-clopped up to Velania, the aasimar caught the smell of freshly baked scones.
Before she could ask, Sorrel bounded up the final step – so much bounding from one ranger – and touched Zola’s shoulder awkwardly as she dismounted.
“Are you OK Zola?”
“I’m fine, fine, absolutely fine,” Zola’s voice started high and almost reached the upper limit of human hearing by the time she’d finished.
Suddenly they were hugging, a little awkwardly but with tangible affection, then they pulled apart and Sorrel met Zola’s eyes. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you,” her mouth twisted. “I’m not good at… people…. But I know a little of how you must be feeling. I mean, I didn’t kill Sylvia in single combat, but still.”
“What actually is this, if you don’t mind?” Felix was clearly baffled at being summoned to watch a cuddle.
“An'Ahkrim is caught in the prime and can’t go further,” Velania explained as they strapped on their packs and started down the temple steps. “Because he switched sides he’s not automatically an angel. He has to reckon with himself. I think he needs… something. Jasathriel wants us.”
“I should get some beer,” Felix nodded thoughtfully.
---
The Angelbark was limitless, luminous, and flourishing. Its canopy was eclipsed by beech, asp, and hemlock, cottonwood, birch, and juniper, their leaves and branches allowing for just enough light to pass down for a flood of ferns to sprout in the flat, fertile ground.
The journey passed with Zola and Felix riffing on a few classics and the party singing along. Zola purified the scones every day with spiritual rituals and Velania did her best to follow a set of instructions on a small sheet of parchment.
“Do you think that rock looks like an old man?” she asked Sorrel at one point.
“What sort of directions are these?” Felix grimaced. “Where did you get them?”
“They flew in through my window,” Velania blushed slightly. “I think I’m being tested.”
Sorrel doubted this was a test. It felt more like classic military jamming tactics, throwing informational chaff at a route to keep the destination safe using a journey so complex it was impossible to remember.
--
“Is Jackal picking a weird meeting point just to be an arsehole?” Zola ventured after a they had descended a particularly obscure path hidden by bushes that might have looked like three old ladies if viewed from an unfeasibly specific angle and were setting up camp, lighting a fire and pulling cups of ale from Felix’s quarter keg, chilled by his bardic magic.
"You've met Jackal right?" Sorrel sighed.
“I have,” Zola nodded.
"He's definitely doing it to be an arsehole. Bless him."
"Yeah, I thought so," Zola looked around the forest. "Weirdly I think I crossed from the Feywild here once, several decades ago. Maybe before there even was Daring Heights. When all was unspoiled beauty."
“I prefer the city,” Felix had a habit of underscoring his conversation with little runs on his guitar, as if he lived in a musical and was about to summon a team of dancers. “In the city, you can find an ale house and eat your fill, talk with your friends about the vagaries of life.”
“Eating too much makes you lethargic,” Sorrel shook her head. “It’s dangerous.”
“I meant at the end of a hard day,” Felix pointed out.
“The third most dangerous time,” Sorrel shrugged. “The best time to take a mark is in their sleep, then dawn, then in the evening after a heavy meal.”
Felix stopped his delicate runs and started strumming softly. “Risk is part of life’s rich tapestry,” Felix nodded as he strummed. “There will always be bad times – but they help us appreciate the good times.”
“Life is pain, Felix,” Sorrel sighed. “Anyone who tries to tell you differently is selling something.”
The stars were coming out slowly. For a moment Sorrel could only see five in the sky and almost panicked until the others winked into view.
From off in the distance, she heard the crunching of one pair of boots making a steady approach. She listened hard.
The others heard and rose to their feet, moving out of the light of the campfire and towards the sound of the oncoming noise. Whoever they were, they were making no attempt at stealth, for better or worse.
Sorrel armed and primed a heavy hand crossbow that looked like a child’s toy but could take an adult’s head clean off, then slipped it under her cloak.
“Sorrel,” Velania had noticed. “Really? What if it’s Jasathriel?”
“It’s not,” Sorrel shrugged. “Jasathriel never walks up to you with his boots crunching. He appears silently behind you and insults you.”
“Check out the fucking brains on Darkfire,” Jasathriel’s voice came from behind them. He was sitting by the fire, his expression moving rapidly from scornful to weary. “It’s An'Ahkrim, obviously, you crack fucking team of super elite commando detectives. Heaven help us all.”
Sorrel’s eyes met Velania’s for a fraction of a second and a thousand stories were told in that moment.
And An'Ahkrim appeared in front of them. The same commanding presence, but muted, so he looked like a remarkably charismatic lumberjack.
“I would ask if I could join you but as you’ve invited me…” he said.
“This is so awkward,” Zola breathed.
“I apologise, I’ve lost my arcane abilities and immortality,” An'Ahkrim briefly seemed shy.
“Would you like a scone?” Zola held her basket out. “You look adorable.”
“And you’re wildly patronising,”
He took one anyway and gazed meaningfully at the keg while Felix filled a couple of extra mugs and passed them to the two newcomers.
After a deep draught, An'Ahkrim sat on a log near the fire. “You wanted to see me? I promise I’m not killing babies.”
“That’s what a person who kills babies would say,” Zola pointed out.
“Could I ask - why didn’t you kill me? In Hell, I mean,” Sorrel leaned forwards, her brow furrowed.
An'Ahkrim chugged the last of his ale and asked for a refill. Jasathriel downed his and indicated his empty mug as well.
"The atmosphere here is so weird," Zola muttered to herself.
An'Ahkrim drained his second cup in one long swallow. “I made a choice,” he said eventually. “That’s how it all begins You can’t expect to wake up one day and be changed. I’m starting to think and feel slowly… I didn’t just wake up and think - killing babies is wrong.”
“Did you actually kill babies?” Felix looked shocked. “I thought you were joking.”
An'Ahkrim turned, his face granite. “I was a powerful fiend in the Heralds of Blade and Ash.”
Felix paused, took this in. “Oh…”
An'Ahkrim’s stance shifted subtly as if bracing for combat, but Felix started playing a soft melody whilst staring thoughtfully at a tree.
“When it comes to measuring the morality of an action by its intention or its outcome I benefitted from the outcome, so we’re good,” Sorrel nodded. “Thank you.”
“Why did you join the Heralds in the first place,” Zola spoke up. “And why leave?”
“There’s so many questions you aren’t asking,” An'Ahkrim shook his head. “Why did I join? Glory, violence, bloodshed, Shar. Righteousness. Our version. I went willingly.”
“Did Rahmiël sleep with you too?” the drow paladin looked nervous.
“We all slept with each other,” An'Ahkrim drawled, a slight sardonic twitch at the corner of his mouth as he met Zola’s eyes. “All of us.”
Zola looked flustered.
“My reasons for leaving are more relevant,” An'Ahkrim turned towards Velania. “Within me there was a growing darkness that I didn’t enjoy. A fear that I didn’t savour. The first time that was illuminated was someone like you.” He nodded at the young Aasimar. “Her duality was even more inexplicable. Demonic blood yet holy. I almost thought I’d hallucinated. Then I met you and there was one more.”
“The angel with devil's horns,” Velania gave a half smile. “Seraphina.”
“She was born with a choice,” An'Ahkrim explained. “She makes that choice every day and I think the choice is both. The possibility of a choice appeared before me which was the first choice. The desire to believe is to believe.”
“If you always do what you’ve always done you’ll only get what you’ve always got,” Felix nodded wisely.
“The question is,” Zola’s eyes were boring into him. “What do you want?”
“First I want a soul,” An'Ahkrim said softly. Sorrel frowned and reached for her crossbow. “I mean my own, Darkfire. I’m growing a moral compass. If I ever achieve a soul I will have to spend years beyond years to forgive myself.”
“It’s going to hurt and take a long time,” Jasathriel was clearly trying to be patient. “If he succeeds he will be inherently good in a way I’ll never be. I fell down. He’s falling upwards.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Zola said eventually.
“Zola, I’m a celestial being – I can see four colours you can’t.”
“What do they look like?”
“How can I describe them to you Zola?”
“Crayons?” Zola hauled out a pack of 36 and some parchment.
Velania cut in as fast as she could. “One of the reasons I wanted to find you was that I had some sense of this,” she spoke rapidly, then turned to An'Ahkrim. “I won’t enter the discussion on souls. It’s a complex topic. But you made a choice. Put yourself at risk. A world of trouble. Do you need help?”
“He does,” Jasathriel nodded.
“Well,” Sorrel turned towards An'Ahkrim. “I have a debt to pay…”
“Right, Sorrel, shall I go find an owlbear and you can kill it and we’re even?” An'Ahkrim sighed.
“I don’t just kill,” Sorrel was indignant. “I do other things.”
It was so quiet she could hear beetles rustling across the forest floor.
“I mean, mainly I kill, admittedly, but I’ve had stuff to... well, kill. It’s been busy. But there’s been weeks I haven’t killed anything.”
“So now I’m being told I need help by.. my jailer?” An'Ahkrim ventured.
Zola seemed to tune out and she started scribbling on some parchment with crayons.
"It's the Heralds," she whispered to Sorrel. "Including An'Ahkrim."
“Nice abs,” Sorrel nodded. “An'Ahkrim does not skip leg day.”
She looked up to significant stares passing between Velania and An'Ahkrim.
“We’re all choosing,” Velania said, finally.
Astonishingly An'Ahkrim seemed shy. “I would appreciate the help…”
Jasathriel took Zola’s crayons and started drawing elaborate concentric circles on a sheet of paper using only the blues.
“So,” he began, holding up kaleidoscope shades of cobalt, sapphire, azure and ultramarine all cascading over each other as if in motion. “This is a schematic diagram of virtue, souls, morality and the bitruncated tesseract of pan-dimensional existence… it’s a slightly anthropcentric concept of agency, I admit, but whaddya going to do? It’s crayons.”
An'Ahkrim bit into a scone with the carelessness of a creature who’d heard this speech a few times before.
“Now, you can see here,” Jasathriel tapped the paper. “This here’s your immaterial essence. Standard. Over here, and you’ll notice the positioning of the two, that’s the intersection of reason, spirit and appetite, more your de anima as you might find in… well, you. Now chummy here,” and he nodded at An'Ahkrim as he tapped a different part of the paper. “He’s more on the dualistic pluralism route into the transcendental paramatman or free over-soul and you can follow the folds of this cross-polytope decacross to get a pretty good idea.”
They stared at him, faces wrestling with the vastness of creation.
“So…” Sorrel began, then drifted off.
Silence.
“It’s slightly more complicated than I thought,” she finished eventually.
“Let me be really fucking basic then - you can see the whole sheet is blue, yes?” Jasathriel waved his hand over it vaguely. “Let’s pretend that blue is special. Everyone is special in one way. You’re born souls. You’re mortals. You don’t realise how special you are. And yet’s not the same blue. You are also special in lots of different ways. You forget that most of the farmers and merchants don’t do the shit you do. Very few people have magic. Why are you so keen on not being special?”
“You’re saying the average merchant wouldn’t have an archangel advising them on investments?” Zola’s brow furrowed.
“Are you a merchant Zola?” Jasathriel sighed.
“No,” Zola sounded a little wistful. “I can barely count.”
Suddenly Felix’s softly picked tune found new life. The archaic Lydian harmonies hung on the air. Slowly, slowly, the melody unfolded. It was transparent, pure, and crystalline, like a tropical sea, a mountain lake. Water on water, calm sliding over calm, a counterpoint of serenities.
The time quickened. A new melody leapt and bounded, but over earthly mountains. Then the slow melody joined it, was doubled; it was as though heaven had suddenly and impossibly become more heavenly, had passed from achieved perfection into perfection yet deeper and more absolute. It quivered, it was alive, it seemed to grow into an almost passionate serenity. The miraculous paradox of eternal life and eternal repose was musically realized. …
Jasathriel’s voice danced between the notes, at once part of the music and distinct from it, his gruff tones still throbbing but somehow sounding like a mother’s tears.
“Velania doesn’t think she’s wise,” Jasathriel’s words were felt as much as heard. “Sorrel thinks she’s a weapon. That bard doesn’t realise he’s solved four equations that the heavens have been struggling to resolve for half of eternity while he’s drunk and playing a song…”
He let his words sink in.
Sorrel sat on the forest floor and drifted for a while.
The places she went were dark and hollow. She walked midnight halls with the spirits of those she had known, those who had stood with her but were gone, their names etched in stone on vast walls that stretched into forever. A thousand years passed in a fleeting second.
The House creed echoed in her mind.
Everything has its purpose.
There is a time to be born, and a time to die.
A time to laugh; a time to dance; a time to love and a time to heal.
A time to weep; a time to mourn; a time to hate and a time to kill.
For those who serve without fear or favour there is a time for war, and a time for peace.
Both these masters serve the same.
To understand this is our duty.
There is a place for everything, and everything has a place.
We serve because we have our place.
And so, we serve until death.
She blinked and realised Velania and Jasathriel were deep in conversation about families and mentors and leaders and angels.
Events moved in their words beyond Sorrel’s understanding.
Then Felix stopped playing.
“What the fuck was that song?” Sorrel asked him. A light in his eyes died away.
“Just… I don’t know… it came to me. How did it go?”
Sorrel tried to find the notes and they wouldn’t come.
“I don’t know,” she was relieved and yet heartbroken.
An'Ahkrim swallowed the last mouthful of the last scone, washed it down with the dregs of his pint and rose to his feet.
“There’s no manual for this, no map,” he began. “I have to exist in uncertainty because that is the crucible in which I will be shaped. I have to keep making choices. I have to exist aimlessly to understand what it is to have a goal. That said, the motivations behind my choices and my deeds don’t matter if the result is good. So I remain here. I build my log cabin. I exist. I drift. I seek the light of purpose.”
“You’re on your way to glory but right now you sound like me,” Sorrel scratched her nose thoughtfully. “Can I come and hang out sometimes? While you’re in the scumball stage. No killing. Not even any talking. Just scumball companionship until you reach your next stage and grow beyond me.”
“Having two sociopathic killers hanging out together is either the worst or the best thing for both of us,” An'Ahkrim almost smiled. “But sure, why not? I’ve never hung out before. There was always so much to do before. The Blood War took up a lot of time, then there was the tempting, the vengeance, the torture and so much admin. Once I’ve finished the cabin I’ve got no plans for the first time since the fall of Asmodeus.”
“Well, I think that about wraps that up,” Jasathriel seemed pleased. “Remember, Darkfire, in the gathering of the arcane comes new understanding and that which was may never be again.”
Sorrel thought for a second.
“That just doesn’t help me at all, but I appreciate the thought.”
But Jasathriel was gone.
---
They packed up and were about to throw earth on the fire when Sorrel heard the unmistakable click and rasp of crossbows loading. Six, she figured, and all around them.
“One of you has something that I want,” a voice came out of the darkness. She had never heard it before. “No need to do anything foolish. We have no quarrel with any of you.”
Felix waved his hands in arcane patterns but whatever spell he was trying to cast fizzled out.
The tip of a crossbow carved with softly glowing arcane runes was suddenly visible in the firelight pointing at Velania’s head.
“This one is going to give me what is mine – the gauntlet. She has it. I can feel it. It is mine.”
Sorrel measured the distance between her and Velania. She assumed her fey step would be blocked if Felix couldn’t cast, and she doubted she could move fast enough to put herself between Velania and the crossbow.
And if she did, what of the other five?
If anyone harmed one hair on Velania’s head, they would regret it for every second of their very short and very eventful life.
“I have the gauntlet – step into the light.” Velania pulled a gauntlet from her backpack and laid it on the ground. A sigil was glowing on its cold steel.
“Wonderful. Gracias.” A spirit hand materialised and pulled the gauntlet back into the darkness.
“Could I ask your name?” Velania’s voice was strong and proud.
A man stepped into the firelight, very pale, with heavy, dark rings under his eyes.
Something about him troubled Sorrel.
“Zola…” she whispered. “That scent of undead thing you have…”
Zola sniffed and nodded. “He’s undead.”
“I have no intention to cause undue harm,” the surprisingly handsome creature smiled. “That fiend is making progress. Why should I interfere in that? I have plenty of smites. None of them for him.”
Zola recoiled. “Smites?” she whispered to Sorrel. “Undead paladin?”
“Why so much artillery?” Velania sounded puzzled rather than challenging.
“I have already died. I have no intention of dying again."
"Where will you go now?"
"The hands of the revenant do not rest. We go where we are needed."
His voice cracked, he stepped back into the shadows and the crossbows were gone.
Sorrel searched the darkness but they had vanished completely.
Zola shivered. "The hand of the revenant... the prophecy of Themis."
"What?" Sorrel turned towards her. "I am done with prophecies."
She paused.
"But given that, what did she say?"
Zola recited like she was reading something out in class.
"I see;
The bonds of the Prime Material
The foundations of reality
The balance of existence
Coming apart.
I see;
Fractal beings of power Clawing at themselves and at each other
The shards, sharper than any knife
Burrowing under the skin.
Behold the pale riders!
The midnight sentries are coming;
Their watch is far from over.
The call will go out among them,
As unrest forces
The Hand of the Revenant.”
If a bird had flown over the clearing it would have seen a small party of four standing alone around a fire.
To the west, much further west, it would have seen a lone figure on a white horse with the moon shining down on them as if it was trying to reach out and touch them.
