Atlantic City – Velania – 20/04/2022

Continues after [Season 10] Bedside Manners

Part of the Heralds of Blades and Ash plotline


Your soul gives way to dark before the dawn

The sun was setting on a long day.

I saw him daily. One week had passed. No change in Coll.

Tiredness, just tiredness.

I trudged back to my chambers. Despondent. I was foolish to imagine I could so easily fix what the scholars and experts were toiling night and day to understand. Foolish and arrogant.

I felt powerless.

I tossed my gear to the ground and sank onto my bed. I sank further. Selûne, let me sleep until dawn.

I heard a metallic clatter. Something had flown through my window. A missile with a tiny wrap of paper around it.

I felt irritable. I pulled myself up. I unwrapped the scroll.


I shook my head. Not tonight. Please. I was exhausted. I flopped back onto my bed.

Twilight could wait. Today had defeated me. I was done.

Then, I don’t know why, Jackal’s prophecy floated into my head. “She will need you before this is all over.”

Twilight was only half an hour away.

I sighed heavily.

I sat up.


Every trace of who you ever were is gone

I walked the chaotic, filthy streets of the North-east Sprawl. Aptly named. I heard the echo of drunkards baying. A baby crying and being yelled at. Figures darted in the shadows. Feral gazes followed me as I walked. I circled several blocks to make sure I wasn’t being followed. The longer I was out here, the less I liked it.

I caught a glimpse of Tayz, the 6-foot Aarakocra priest of Horus, standing with a big Half-Elven bruiser I didn’t recognise.

I heard a stern voice inside my head. “I hope nobody followed you.”

“Mm-hm,” I replied mentally. I continued walking a block. Paused. Casually crossed the street. Paused. Walked back. Nobody else seemed to notice. I approached them.

The bruiser glared at Tayz. “That’s how you do it, see?”

I nodded at Tayz, relieved to see a friendly, familiar face. “Have we met before?” I asked the Half-Elven bruiser.

“In a different guise,” they replied curtly.

I had a good guess. The Half-Elf I had seen with Jackal. Kháos. I felt a twinge of irritation. Saw an image of Glint close to tears and despair, staring at the two of them across the training grounds at Fort Ettin. I didn’t like Jackal and I didn’t like Kháos. It wasn’t about sides – it was about methods.

I saw a familiar figure approaching. My friend Amble, the Forest Gnome, riding a huge, shaggy mastiff. If I didn’t look like I belonged in the Sprawl, neither did he. I smiled a greeting.

The bruiser frowned suspiciously. “I’m going to have to check you out.” I knew this meant Kháos was digging through Amble’s head right now, looking for signs of treachery. “We’re here to defend Selûne. There’s no pay, and it may cost your life. Do you accept?”

Kháos was hoping to scare Amble away. But I knew him better than that. He accepted without question. Amble was a plucky young soul.

Zola arrived late. “I see you’ve started asking permission before delving into people’s heads,” the Drow champion observed drily.

Kháos scoffed. “It’s not a request. More of a heads-up.” They glared at Amble for a moment. “You’ll do.” They glanced up and down the street, restless. “I thought there’d be more silver people. Anyone hazard a guess as to where Sorrel is?”

“Pretty sure Sorrel could be here already. When she wants you to see her, she’ll make herself visible,” I retorted.

Kháos scowled.

Jackal and Sorrel arrived soon after. Sorrel gliding through the twilight shadows, as silent as the last breath of life. It was odd to see a man in full plate emerge with as much stealth.

I shivered when I saw him. I felt defensive and defiant.

Jackal measured the group with a single glance. He glared at me. “You working on what I told you?” he barked.

“I listened to your advice. I’m trying to act on it –”

He turned to Amble. “You’ve been vetted. But you’re new. You will probably die and we can’t promise payment.”

“I understand,” Amble said, his face even.

“Let’s go,” Jackal said. He walked away.

We followed in silence.

He led us to a new temple to Ilmater – the god not only of suffering but of compassion. A deity not adjacent to Selûne, but not opposed to her either. He approached the manse next to the temple – more of a shack than anything – and hammered his fist on the door.

A priest opened up. Reverend Father Cai Okt’Anys of the church of Ilmater. He stared at Jackal in shock for a long, long time.

“You swore I’d never see you again,” said Cai.

“You said you were out of the game,” said Jackal.

The silence that followed was a monolith of unspoken tensions. Ex-lovers who would rather not revisit their ghosts from the past, but were forced to co-operate once more. The bitterness was written across both their faces.

Cai stood aside and beckoned us into his home. We met Cassima Okt’Anys, a younger Half-Elven woman with symbols tattooed across her forehead, who walked with a cane. She studied the two of them, then told Cai sternly, “I told him to come – you’re not listening to me. I received a vision. Tell me,” – she turned to the rest of us – “what are the Heralds of Blade and Ash?”

Father Cai made tea and sat scowling as we explained.

Tayz, Zola and Sorrel were seeking artifacts. They had direct experience of the fiends: the Five Heralds of Blade and Ash, who had renewed an ancient cycle of war between Shar and Selûne known as the Unending Word. The Heralds had brought death and destruction to many people.

My friends described the fight at the farm, where Kavel had crushed Adyël and sent him back to hell. The encounter with Ophanim the drow and the fiend they called The Silent One. When they described the massacre by Adhyël and Rahmiël at the Cave of Selûne, my heart nearly stopped.

Selûne had once called me by roundabout means to an unremarkable cave, and I had consecrated it and made a temple unto her. The cave was actually an ancient site of her power – I had not known that, but of course, something must have led me there. The call of one of her artifacts, perhaps.

And now those gnomes were gone. Murdered by the servants of Shar. I knotted my fists.

Cassima replied to the others. “You are hunting for artifacts? I have a location.”

“They’re important somehow,” Tayz replied.

“The fiends are hunting them too, but they can’t get at them without us,” added Zola, a weight of inevitability hanging on her words.

Cassima produced a map and indicated a spot a few miles from the Cave of Selûne. “Maybe there’s a necklace there. I had stopped listening because I thought it was a mistake.” We studied the location.

Then her eyes rolled back into her head and she spoke with the ragged voice of a prophet of doom. “Beware the smoke. There’s something in the smoke.”

“The Flesh-Eater!” Zola spat. “The one who ate the hermit.”

Cassima’s focus snapped back into the room again. She looked disoriented.

Jackal slammed his tea down. “Kháos will go with you. Go now.”

We stood and hurried out of the shack.

Something compelled me to glance back at Jackal. He was studying me. “Try to keep them alive, Velania.”

I shrugged numbly. “I’m trying. But I’m not doing a great job of that at the moment.” I felt inadequate. They were all far more experienced in combat. And if I couldn’t even keep Coll safe, what hope did I have against these servants of Shar?

“All you can do is keep on doing the work,” he replied.

I glanced at Father Cai, brooding in the corner of the room, then back at Jackal scowling. For all he got under my skin, I saw something new in him. He felt hurt. He felt pain. He fought to control it, but it boiled under the surface in the form of anger. Whatever great traumas had been done to him in the past, he cared. He cared. I did see that.

I didn’t have to like him. But I saw him. Even felt… empathy for him. “I’m starting to understand why you have the manner you have,” I told him. “No offence.”

“None taken what-so-fucking-ever,” he barked.

We left with Kháos and dashed into the night.


The things of the abyss, they make their claim

Kháos drove us on at a relentless pace. We pushed through the shadowy branches of the Feythorn Forest. Treacherous and evasive as ever, the Feythorn confounded reason itself. After trudging up a hill, we would look back to see we had been stumbling down a creek. After tripping over roots and vines, we would see the lay of the ground had already shifted behind us.

Exhaustion seeped into our muscles, but Kháos pushed us onward. Onward. Unyielding. Implacable.

Somewhere west of the Cave of Selûne lay another ruin, an unmarked spot on the map. “If we get to the Temple of Torm, we’ve gone too far,” Kháos said.

Those were our directions. There was no further conversation.

Eventually, the Feythorn shrugged us out into a clearing. Ahead stood the low walls of an ancient ruin. Crumbled stone flagstones, long eroded by ivy, moss and the elements.

The moon fought to reach us with her protective watch – to no avail. This place was dripping with shadow. Old sconces within the ruin glowed a dull, sick purple.

“They’re here. They’re waiting,” Kháos uttered into our heads. “Make your preparations now. And hurry.”

Tayz’s connection to Horus was welcome. He provided powerful protections to give us all vitality and in particular keep young Amble on his feet should we be overwhelmed. Zola called her stag, Cor’Vandor.

We cautiously crept forward into the ruin. Mist wreathed about us unnaturally. Shadows drifted through the ruins, evading our direct line of sight. I remembered Cassima’s chilling warning. There is something in the smoke.

Sorrel and I spread out. She stumbled into a low shrub, and poison spores puffed into the air. She gagged, but I sensed the thrum of her Autumn’s Warmth choker protecting her from poison. We had both received that same gift from the Feywild. We moved on.

And then they came.

Ahead of me, Adhyël materialised on a low wall, barely visible in the gloom. A bare-chested warrior, half of his torso covered in chitinous spurs of armour. He pursed his lips. His eyes glinted arrogantly.

Thwip, thwip, thwip. Three arrows appeared in Adhyël’s side. Sorrel was standing beside me. Her bowstring still vibrating.

Adhyël pulled out all three arrows with a grin. He vanished.

Sorrel’s scowl told me someone nearby had blocked her from infusing the arrows with magic.

I crept ahead.

To my side, Rahmiël appeared in a silent surge. She barely glanced at us. Bored, disdainful. Her eyes flashing beneath a shock of red hair.

Zola strode up beside me, yelling at her, “Don’t run this time. That’s boring!”

As Zola charged forward, Rahmiël chuckled dismissively at her and disappeared.

“What are these tricks?” Zola snapped to us.

“Hard to tell,” I said. “Just beware of the smoke.” Shadows danced at the corners of my vision. The mist clutching at our heels.

Were they toying with us?

Were the purple lights connected to Shar? I heard Tayz preparing to dispel them. “No! That’s what’s keeping them at bay,” Kháos muttered to him. “They can’t get at the relic until we do. Spread out and find it.”

Tayz began a ritual to seek out hidden power. He tentatively stepped across the uneven flagstones, with Amble sending his owl to help.

Adhyël emerged from the dark again. Right in front of us.

Thwip, thwip, thwip. Three fresh arrows struck his side.

He pulled them out in a gout of ichor, grinning all the more at Sorrel.

Then Zah’Ranin loomed out of the shadows, atop a wall. The terrifying flesh-eater who had slain Ivoluin, High Diviner Rholor's friend. Zah’Ranin spread their arms wide, impossibly wide, brandishing vicious claws.

I attempted to summon a weapon, but something interrupted my incantation. It sputtered and faded.

They were mocking us.

My heart pounded. I exploded with fury. I called upon my celestial ancestry and my wings burst forth in a blast of silver light. I rose into the air and stared dead into Zah’Ranin’s eyes. “I don’t know why you’re here. I don’t care who you are. Just show us who we have to send home!”

Zah’Ranin leered back. The fiend opened their mouth and the smile split at the seams, spreading grotesquely across their face. Their long, long tongue flickered hideously.

I heard Kháos sighing in my mind. “This is holy ground. They cannot attack. But others are coming. Focus on the relic. Hurry. We don’t have much time.”

The shadows frothed with urgency in the sides of my vision. Leaves rustled, the stones creaked, demonic whispers twisted through the air.

The smoke was approaching.

We spread out in haste.

Ophanim emerged and then retreated into the dark. With flowing white hair and a deadly sword at his side, he was a Drow sword-dancer rather than a devil. Whatever he was, his eyes glowed as cold and red as the others.

As I flew by in my search, the fifth fiend materialised on an outcrop – the Silent One, as my friends had been calling him. Ominously handsome but a terrifying hulk of a man. Impossibly large. Incredibly muscled. Towering over us. A demonic exaggeration of the most exquisite sculpture of an athlete. His pupils dilated and his stare followed me as I flew past him. He had a cold, expressionless fascination. It bored right through me. It was pure evil. I felt unnerved. Vulnerable. I shivered.

His gaze did not leave me.

Ophanim unfolded his arms and stretched a hand towards Zola. “Come one step closer, and I’ll hurt you worse than last time!” Zola snarled. The enemy's grin curled mockingly as the darkness encircled us.

Finally, Tayz shouted, “I have found it!”

Kháos communicated to all of us. “It is here! Hurry, all of you!”

We rushed to Tayz. Amble’s hound started digging, and Tayz summoned a huge, golden embodiment of Horus to rip the chest from the ground.

The five fiends stood poised nearby, their eyes widening greedily. The Silent One was still staring at me. My throat was dry, my stomach lead.

The mists billowed. The shadows thrashed. Boughs cracked and the wind groaned.

The whispers grew louder. Shapes were forming. I heard Cassima’s warning: Beware the smoke. There’s something in the smoke.

The dread chilled its way through my blood. Bile rose in my throat. Kháos shoved the chest into my hands. “There is something in here. Use it.”

We readied ourselves for battle.

“No,” Kháos said in our heads. “On my count, all of you… RUN!”


But the things of heaven, they will do the same

Kháos raised a hand and slammed something into the ground. An explosion of force blasted out. I was flung backwards through the air. I span wildly.

My ears rang. My head span. My wings found purchase. I flew blindly north across the Feythorn Forest until I could fly no more. Then I ran, crashing through branches and undergrowth, gashed by thorns and broken branches. My chest pounded to bursting point.

I heard the others thundering through the trees. Our paths converged. We were gasping for air.

We kept on running.

By the light of the moon, we fled. Bruised and bloody.

Ahead, we found Kháos, exhausted, subdued, barely standing. Wrecked by battle. We came to a stop.

Kháos gestured for the chest. I could barely lift it. My hands were shaking violently as I held it out.

They opened it and presented me with an amulet.

My breath rasped as I stared at the relic in my hand. A symbol of Selûne set in silver, inlaid with slivers of moonstone and other tiny gems. It was stunning. Delicate, yet powerful. “You will need this,” Kháos told me. “Now go. Hurry.”

By the time we stumbled out of the treeline of the Feythorn Forest, the moon had dropped beneath the horizon. The sky was turning orange and gold with the radiance of the pre-dawn light. Birds were heralding in the new day.

We had survived the night. How – I did not know.

I felt wretched. Drawn thin. I had been exhausted at dusk. This morning, I was dead on my feet. I would be late for Coll today.

When I closed my eyes, I saw the gaze of the Silent One upon me again. Standing over me. Watching me. Studying me. I shook him out of my head. I shivered.

But the fiends of Shar had been thwarted. This time. We had recovered another of the relics that would aid us in the final conflict.

The resolution of the Unending Word.




Section titles are altered lyrics from “Matamoros Banks” (Bruce Springsteen).