Haunting Shadows

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The carriage pulled up outside the Four Fair Winds, slowing gradually to a stop. The red tiefling sitting inside the cart jumped out with a flourish and walked around to the half-elf who was driving the horses.

“Alright, Alucerys. I’ll be staying here for a day or two at most, so… Rest up for the night and travel back in the morning. I’ll get you a room here for the night, alright?” The half-elf saluted in response, with a smirk, to which Arkadius responded, “Not an excuse to get drunk again like last time.”

He turned as the carriage and horses behind him continued onwards towards the stables. Arkadius’ hand rested on the tavern door for a few moments just like it had many years ago back in Fallford, the memories flashing through his head, before he pushed it open.

A cozy interior greeted Arkadius, the setting sun making the light pouring through the windows shimmer in beams of orange and gold throughout the wood panelled foyer. Soft music can be heard from the lounge, but it is not the music of his friend. He sees Sheryl sitting at a small table, watching the performance, a pleasant expression on her face. A recently finished meal is in front of her and her hand rests delicately on the stem of a wine glass.

She turns, having smelt the brimstone drift through the air and her smile brightens. Sheryl waves at Arkadius, gesturing for him to join her. He returns her wave, but his smile isn’t as bright as hers. The last few months were clinging onto him greatly. He walks over to her table and pulls out the chair next to hers, his six fingers dextrously wrapping around the top.

“A few days later than I would have liked, but you kept your word this time,” a smile now cracking across his lips. “Back in Fallford, when we were leaving, I was a little… rude and terser than I’d have liked,” he says, taking the seat. “But I think you can perhaps understand why. It was a mess of a situation.”

Sheryl waves her hand, dismissing his apology. “You have nothing to apologise for Arkadius. I understand why.”

She pauses a moment, looks over to the bar and with the same hand gestures for a drink to be brought over. When she looks back to him, her eyes are downcast.

“I may have lied to you when I said I could get out by returning to the Summer Court. I couldn’t have you stay there any longer.” She looks up at him and her eyes are filled with empathy. “It took more than years from you.”

Arkadius reaches up to his eyes with his right hand, pinching and rubbing the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “It… doesn’t especially matter how you came back home. I just made you swear you would. Although…” He pauses for a moment as a glass of Fire Whiskey was delivered to the table. Arkadius mentally remarks on how many of the taverns across the Dawnlands had started to recognise his favourite drink. “It does make me curious at how you did get home. If you didn’t go via the Summer Court… I thought you had ways to get there?”

A rueful smile cuts across her face. “My circlet allows me to return only once a moon cycle. I had only just come back a day or two before we left to find your home. But despite how it may seem, I can be clever,” Sheryl boasts as she looks at Arkadius. She sighs. “I owe Aurelia a favour for getting me out of there.”

Arkadius grins in response. “I have indeed seen you be clever many times before. I’ve also seen you now be a complete and total idiot, swinging a sword around left, right and centre and muttering something about me being a tall smelly one.” Sheryl gives him a look and his grin turns into a chuckle for a few moments. “That was… rather amusing, for all of a few seconds till we realised we needed to fix it and, you know… the person who could do that was, uhh… you.”

It was clear he was pointedly dodging around the matter of how it was fixed. Sheryl wasn’t going to let him though. Her blue eyes lock on to Arkadius’ cat-like ones and there’s something unsettling about them when she does.

“About that,” she starts, folding her hands over each other on the table, keeping her voice low. “Tell me what happened. Please.” She isn’t asking, she is expecting honesty and it’s clear from her tone. Arkadius’ soft chuckling dies away and is replaced with a deep frown. Between the pair, there is silence for a minute, the only sounds are the ones from around them.

“I had to make things right for you. By any means necessary. I wasn’t willing to even consider allowing the Shadowfell to leave such a great mark on you and your great mind. So…” he sighs, closing his eyes, chin dropping to his chest. “After the Nagpa made your mind all funny, we took it down pretty rapidly. Then the Raven Queen came back to us and the others asked her to fix you. But she refused, because they didn’t offer something in return, no service or tribute or anything. So…”

It was clear as day that Arkadius was uncomfortable, squirming in his seat, fingers tapping the whiskey glass nervously. His next words came out quickly, “So I pledged to serve her in this life and the next, and there’s no getting out of it now, and it was a worthy sacrifice so don’t tell me off for it, I couldn’t bear to lose you.”

Sheryl’s expression is unreadable. Then she blinks and a flicker of sadness turns down the corners of her lips before righting themselves again.

“I see.” She takes a deep breath. “Words are not enough to tell you how… grateful I am at the… sacrifice you made, Arkadius… I don’t know if I will ever be able to repay that debt…” Sheryl looks down at her hands. He sees her retreat into herself, which is unusual for her.

Arkadius slumps down into his chair. He reaches out to her to rest his hand on hers.

“Sheryl… I don’t know why you think I would even ask you to repay me in any way. It isn’t a debt, no deal was made between us, nothing. You owe me nothing.” He tries to get her to look at him, but she stays withdrawn. Arkadius takes his hand back.

“Well, if you want to repay me, then… answer me this question. When we… were separated. When we were travelling to the Nagpa… I faced my greatest fear. I nearly lost you all in the mist then. And I can’t bear to lose you… I have a few other questions which have been lingering in my mind for a few weeks. But this one has been shouting loudest.”

It is too hard to look at his best friend, so he looks away.

“You’ve been different lately. At times. With the priest at the door to the temple, with the family in the basement of the tavern… I tried pretending I hadn’t noticed, but I have. What’s that about?”

Sheryl looks up to her best friend with a wry smile. Glancing around she notes how crowded it is in the lounge.

“Come, let’s go outside.”

She gets up, leading the way to a door at the back that leads to the garden and patio area. It is a warm summer evening with people milling about but they are staying close to where the wine flows. Sheryl doesn’t stop when they get outside under the delicate lights of the patio garden, she continues farther, moving onto the grass and then to the edge of some carefully curated trees that give the impression of the beginnings of a forest.

At first she keeps her back to him, the feathers of her cloak rustling slightly in the gentle breeze that passes between them every now and then. When she turns around it is only half way and she starts speaking without looking at him.

“I asked Faye if the Raven Queen had spoken to them during their visions and they said no. I take it she did not speak to you either?” She glances at Arkadius. He shakes his head. “I had a feeling.”

Sheryl looks up to the stars starting to appear in the darkening sky.

“She spoke to me in mine. She called me, Raven Daughter, said I was her herald, that I was to be the storm in the high places, the dread wings over the fields… ‘The Last Song they will ever hear…’ I walked through what I think was one of my earliest memories of my past. But then I was brought to the Summer Court and she told me to strike down Queen Titania.” Sheryl’s hands clench into shaking fists. “I couldn’t. I wouldn’t do that. She is my Mother. She has protected me for years. I love her too much to–”

Sheryl stops herself. Turning to Arkadius, she continues.

“I saw a family of halflings, brutally slain, and the Green Knight saying it was my fault they were killed. I didn’t recognise them, or at least, I thought I didn’t. But some part of me did…” She starts pacing, trying to keep her voice steady. “I don’t know what happened with the priest or with the family. I thought I was speaking normally like I always do but sometimes when I try to ask for something people get frightened of me. I don’t know why or how. And I hear them, the ravens. Their calls. It’s–” She stops pacing and goes very still. “I know she is a god, but why would she be interested in me? What have I done to gain her attention? I thought she was interested in you.”

Arkadius is silent, trying to process everything Sheryl had just told him.

“I only assumed she was interested in me because I came from a demiplane of her plane, I…” he falters. “I don’t know why she might be interested in you. But we can try and find out. We’ve proven we have her attention now, and I have pledged to serve her. We can go back to the temple in the future and try to speak to her maybe? I’m sure Bones would enjoy that at least.”

He falls silent again. “As for the… frightening people when you ask them things… I can’t ever remember that happening before Avernus, maybe it has something to do with that…” Arkadius rubs his chin, thinking, but any time he does his thoughts always float back to Fallford and Shadowfell. He shakes his head, trying to clear it.

“I don’t like seeing you this way. I prefer the happy, charming and wonderful Sheryl. I think we need to get to the bottom of why you’ve started being this way, and maybe… Maybe that will help us piece things together?”

“It would be a place to start…” Sheryl admits, voice trailing off.

As she starts to think her pacing starts up again, slower this time. Arkadius continues to rub his chin as he joins her in a slow, thinking dance, his footsteps muted by the boots on his feet. The fae-bard’s brow draws together under her circlet as a thought occurs to her.

“It didn’t start until after Avernus, after Saliyusuli Veránal… Arvel Morningdew gave us that chest of items, your boots and this cloak among them–”

“My footsteps are silent,” Arkadius interrupts. “The boots help with that. The cloak… The cloak.” He turns to face Sheryl, a look of realisation appearing on his face as her brow draws down further. “What happens if you take the cloak off? How about… you take it off and go convince the bartender to give us a month’s worth of free drinks or something? Or… try to do some persuading or something. See if… you know, stuff happens then.”

“Why would I need to take my cloak off in order to persuade the bartender of something so ridiculous?” she asks, a cold note of challenge in her voice. “I might as well charm him into doing that, it would be easier.”

Sheryl eyes her best friend with uncertainty. Arkadius’ eyes narrow, suspicious of her words.

“That’s… what I mean. This isn’t you, this is not normal. And–” He shrugs, suddenly dropping the subject. Arkadius turns around to walk back the way they came, his tone becoming aloof. “I need to book two rooms, and then we have things to do tomorrow. I need to give the last few weeks some thought, so I will catch up with you in the morning, or after we return from K’ul Goran.”

Sheryl stays by the shadows of the trees, watching Arkadius walk back into the Four Fair Winds, feeling like she should try to talk to him more but scared he would push the matter of her wings being the issue. Surely, such a thing couldn’t be the cause of all this. The fault had to originate from the one who offered it to them. The fae-bard was beginning to have her suspicions about Commander Arvel Morningdew, and the more she thought about it the more they grew.

Eventually, Sheryl makes her way back towards the light and laughter of the inn, deciding on an early night’s rest. As she leaves the trees, the shadows shift and fall back, revealing a single large raven sitting high on a branch, it’s dark eyes watching. It gives a single cry before taking wing to fly off into the night.