Heart & Stone 10/10/23 Sorrel
Oct 25, 2023 16:35:20 GMT
Riah, Velania Kalugina, and 1 more like this
Post by stephena on Oct 25, 2023 16:35:20 GMT
When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we'll see
I won't be afraid
I won't shed a tear
Just as long as you stand by me.
Kavel spoke first. “If I can speak from the heart…” he looked at Nathalie. “I would like to hold hands while I talk to the queen,” he whispered. She grasped one of his mighty fingers.
“Queen Titania, thank you for taking time out of your schedule to see me and Nathalie. I am very much in love with Nathalie, the spiritual leader of one of your vassal courts. Before this, we had an arrangement but we have only been able to see each other once a month. It bonded our souls together. We had to reject the bond because of its unexpected transformative problems that prevented Nathalie from leading her people. My goliath influence was making her less of a sprite. So with love and respect for her duties we had to reject our soul connection. I believe that proves our love and we would like, if we cannot have that soul connection back, we would like to see each other. We do not have that anymore.’
The queen’s face remained unmoved. Sorrel felt a bead of sweat trickle down her face. Of course, the Summer Court was hot. The Feywild was like that. The weather matched the logo. Of course, Queen Titania’s palace glittered amongst fields of wheat and golden sunflowers. It was the Feywild and the Summer Court, not Barovia. With a grim inevitability she had accepted that the Fey around her used words like ‘behove’ instead of duty because… Fey.
But this uncertainty unsettled her. Sorrel liked fast decisions, impulsive action and admirable bladework. Trying to discuss romance with a metaphysical entity imbued with supernatural powers was like talking to the taxman about poetry.
Her brother loved Nathalie. This was all she needed to know. This was surely all anyone needed to know. The towering goliath’s devotion overcame matters of sanity – Nathalie, a sprite, was barely the size of his mighty fingers – and he had sacrificed his heart in her best interests.
They had travelled to the Queen’s court after Nathalie’s devoted seneschal Sterel – a fine figure of a sprite if Sorrel said so herself – suggested there might be hope. That the queen might overcome the obvious obstacles to Kavel and Nathalie’s happiness. That, she was beginning to suspect, a flock of pigs might fly past.
Zola stepped forward. “I would like to vouch for Kavel, my companion,” her voice rang out. “He has built a life for himself in the Dawnlands. He is a good man and I want nothing but happiness for him. It is in your power, and we should try to make everyone happy.”
Sorrel watched the queen’s face. There was still no sign of emotion. Sorrel’s voice choked up as she stepped forward and spoke up. “Kavel is of mountain and stone,” she bowed her head. “They gave up everything for each other. Nathalie would have given up leadership for him. This is surely something you would understand. What sort of love must she have for him to consider that? This is an alliance of courage across difficult lands.”
Derthaad’s voice was slow and deep. “I saw Kavel’s joy and his darkness. I wish joy and happiness for both of them – can we deny fate itself?”
Nathalie looked at Kavel, squeezed his hand, bowed to queen Titania, a sprite before a towering archfey, but when Nathalie straightened up the power of the spiritual warrior was there and they seemed almost to be the same size.
“For my part, my heart will always be with Kavel,” she said simply. “Our souls were entwined and are still tied together. To be the spiritual leader of the Damphenite sprites I wish to have Kavel by my side. I know what is coming – and our strength combined will be key. I know this because he is my happiness, my heart, my foundation, just as I am his. Grant us this gift.”
Something seemed to settle in the air. A new kind of warmth in the summer court. Titania was smiling.
“We are a court of revelry but also strength, heart and purpose,” her voice was like the morning sun. “We are a people of stories. Who does not enjoy a good love story? Against all odds across the realms once bound by stone and soul – it’s the stuff legends are made of.”
She clapped her hands. The ground shifted and changed. The Master of Revelries stood before them and behind stretched an unfathomable labyrinth of impossible complexity.
There to greet them was a satyr in the livery of the Master of Revelries. “Yes gentle and fair folk it is I, Kruxeral, and we shall have a challenge of the heart. Lost in the labyrinth of your mind following the thread of your love or some such lyrical nonsense. If you can find each other, get to the centre and find the tree. Expect fey fuckery. Off you go.”
Sorrel felt reality vanish beneath her and she hurtled through an insane void until she crashed to earth in a narrow gap between two high, thorny hedges that instantly shot out tendrils, waving blindly through the air in search of her, she could feel it. Either these grasping vines could sense the drops of fey blood her father had left her, or they could smell the stench of the human blood that drowned out those drops.
She felt dazed and dizzy as if the walls of the maze were pulsing in and out of existence, moving like the slithering tentacles of a carnivorous plant entrapping its prey in some venomous web. Off in the distance she heard the low rumble of thunder. A storm? A timer? What awaited them if they failed? For her brother, heartbreak. But as a tendril corkscrewed into her flesh, writhing beneath her skin, she feared that might be the least of their problems.
She checked her escape belt for operations behind enemy lines – survival kit, cutting tools, flint and striker, weapons, food, check. The House procedures in such a deployment were clear and, in her case, poorly prepared. No operational plans or maps, no previous reconnaissance, unable to establish secure perimeter or temporary base, flanks vulnerable to assault so the first step – and fortunately also the entire task - was field contact with commander or team operatives.
Kavel, she was sure, would find Nathalie. The greater the size of the team, the easier for other members to detect and identify. Zola and Lolli would have a wide search field, but Sterel would be focussed on Nathalie. Ergo, if Sorrel secured direct contact with Sterel they had a reasonable chance of assembling four of the six in rapid order.
And Sterel was a fine figure of a sprite if Sorrel said so herself.
Sorrel locked into that feeling of… admiration? And the traces of fey blood in her sent magicks out into the tangle searching for the subject of her interest. She felt the familiar tug of inevitable drawing together of creatures and followed her instinct where it lead her.
“Sorrel!” Sterel seemed happy to see her.
Sorrel permitted herself a smile, then got down to business. “This labyrinth is fucking with me. Can you find Nathalie?”
Sterel nodded, and the two warriors drew weapons and provided cover for each other until they head Kavel’s massive form crashing through the undefended undergrowth. Just before she could reach out to her brother, they all cocked their heads as Zola’s magic called out them.
Soon they were moving as one towards the tree in the centre of this feyfucked maze and they could almost hear a crowd in the distance.
Sorrel caught sight of a stag in front of a huge tree. Startled, the majestic beast bounded away, and in front of them an enormous trunk clambered up into the sky. Scattered in the roots where Damphenite crystals, and Sorrel began to see a connection – this looked as if someone had grown a new species from crystal seeds. But who could play with nature that way?
“You can make a doorway from that tree that could connect across the planes,” Queen Titania’s voice rang out across what was clearly now an arena. The labyrinth had vanished, and they were surround by fey aristocracy applauding politely. “It would take some work, but it would be a pathway. You could make doors that are connected. You would have to make them in the same time and same place and put them where you wanted them to be. Kavel can carve the wood. Nathalie can carve the stone.”
“Does that mean…?” Nathalie’s voice stumbled.
“This tree is my gift to you,” Titania’s voice echoed across time and space. “For the man who is the mountain himself, I have one more gift if he is willing to accept it.
Kavel could barely speak. “I am grateful for the gift you have given me and Nathalie and I accept every gift,” he mumbled humbly.
Titania smiled, took out her sword, which glowed green at the hilt and the brightest gold at the tip, then planted it into the ground, where vines sprouted and wrapped around his limbs imbuing him with great, Fey strength. He looked invincible.
Sorrel cleared her throat and looked at the queen who nodded, smiled and stood aside. Sorrel bowed and stepped forward. She looked at her brother, her eyes shining.
“I met Kavel within weeks of jumping ashore in Kantas,” she spoke hesitantly at first. “We were tracking a T-Rex and found dark things afoot in the Angelbark. As per, I now realise. He was sorely wounded by a corpse flower but as we slept on a little high ground deep in the forest I remember, just before I closed my eyes, watching him stand guard over us. In that den of horror, I slept like a baby knowing he was keeping me safe.”
She smiled at the memory. Kavel’s thundering power as he sprinted towards the corpse flowers, spinning and gliding as his ancient instincts were alerted by a regurgitated wolf corpse staggering to its feet just in time to meet Kavel’s crashing blow that scattered its foetid bones. Then the flower closing on him, his muscles faltering, him falling as if dead. Her arrow slicing into his floral opponent and finally, as they rested, Kavel stitching his wounds, barely flinching as he rammed what appeared to be a nail in and out of his flesh, tugging what appeared to be a jungle vine until it knitted his skin together.
“We have travelled and fought together in so many grim places,” she continued. “The City of Sigil, the heart of the Feythorn and, for which I can never thank him enough, Phlegethos, the fourth layer of Hell, the realm of fire and pain.”
Again, her mind drifted to the crucible of torment they had fallen into as they arrived in Phlegethos, a bone-dry basin of vastness and death with the ground cracked like a series of savage wounds, all labouring under a low, heavy sky that throbbed with a deep dark red. The immensity of it burned Sorrel’s brain. As far as the eye could see there was a mournful pan of emptiness roasting in the intense fire of eternal malignant sorcery.
All she could smell was the soul crushing scent of her own death. Her skin felt like it had been scraped off by a sandstorm. The cinders burned her feet raw through her boots, and the distant sounds of screeching, shambling, screaming creatures played at the edge of her hearing. And Kavel striding past and bounding off up a nearby hill to get the lay of the land.
Sorrel watched him with a mix of envy and relief. Zola, Marto, herself and Velania were scarred by filth, battlesore and heart sick. Silvia – she felt her heart skip a beat – Silvia had been blindsided by the brutality of the infinite distances stretching out under skies that offered only destruction.
Kavel was untouched by the horror. He had great faith, she realised, not in the amorphous approval of a deity but in himself and his training. It defied the fury of Hell itself.
“He is the mightiest warrior I have met,” her eyes stared up at the sky for fear her tears would be visible. “And yet he is more than a warrior. He is not cruel or merciless, he fights without fear or anger, and he never scorns his foes. When I lost Silvia, it was Kavel who comforted me. When my sisters threw my life into chaos, it was Kavel who showed me the way. And when he fell in love with Nathalie, he was prepared to tear out his own heart so that she remained the spiritual leader of her people.”
She gazed over at her brother, her eyes shining with tears. “Look at that man,” she shook her head. “His strength is Olympian and I know what he will say – that it was deadlifts and presses and never missing leg day…. That Kavel’s Strength Corner made him the mightiest goliath the world has seen."
She paused, smiled.
"But brother, I beg to differ. I believe you are blessed by more than your dedication to training. I believe you are raised up by the love of your friends and the devotion of Nathalie. Warriors grow through training. Heroes grow through sacrifice. You came to Kantas searching for the legend of a mountain that moved. You told me you were mistaken – but you were wrong. You have become that mountain. You have become that legend. And tonight I pay tribute to all you have won - with the greatest of these being Nathalie's love.”
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we'll see
I won't be afraid
I won't shed a tear
Just as long as you stand by me.
Kavel spoke first. “If I can speak from the heart…” he looked at Nathalie. “I would like to hold hands while I talk to the queen,” he whispered. She grasped one of his mighty fingers.
“Queen Titania, thank you for taking time out of your schedule to see me and Nathalie. I am very much in love with Nathalie, the spiritual leader of one of your vassal courts. Before this, we had an arrangement but we have only been able to see each other once a month. It bonded our souls together. We had to reject the bond because of its unexpected transformative problems that prevented Nathalie from leading her people. My goliath influence was making her less of a sprite. So with love and respect for her duties we had to reject our soul connection. I believe that proves our love and we would like, if we cannot have that soul connection back, we would like to see each other. We do not have that anymore.’
The queen’s face remained unmoved. Sorrel felt a bead of sweat trickle down her face. Of course, the Summer Court was hot. The Feywild was like that. The weather matched the logo. Of course, Queen Titania’s palace glittered amongst fields of wheat and golden sunflowers. It was the Feywild and the Summer Court, not Barovia. With a grim inevitability she had accepted that the Fey around her used words like ‘behove’ instead of duty because… Fey.
But this uncertainty unsettled her. Sorrel liked fast decisions, impulsive action and admirable bladework. Trying to discuss romance with a metaphysical entity imbued with supernatural powers was like talking to the taxman about poetry.
Her brother loved Nathalie. This was all she needed to know. This was surely all anyone needed to know. The towering goliath’s devotion overcame matters of sanity – Nathalie, a sprite, was barely the size of his mighty fingers – and he had sacrificed his heart in her best interests.
They had travelled to the Queen’s court after Nathalie’s devoted seneschal Sterel – a fine figure of a sprite if Sorrel said so herself – suggested there might be hope. That the queen might overcome the obvious obstacles to Kavel and Nathalie’s happiness. That, she was beginning to suspect, a flock of pigs might fly past.
Zola stepped forward. “I would like to vouch for Kavel, my companion,” her voice rang out. “He has built a life for himself in the Dawnlands. He is a good man and I want nothing but happiness for him. It is in your power, and we should try to make everyone happy.”
Sorrel watched the queen’s face. There was still no sign of emotion. Sorrel’s voice choked up as she stepped forward and spoke up. “Kavel is of mountain and stone,” she bowed her head. “They gave up everything for each other. Nathalie would have given up leadership for him. This is surely something you would understand. What sort of love must she have for him to consider that? This is an alliance of courage across difficult lands.”
Derthaad’s voice was slow and deep. “I saw Kavel’s joy and his darkness. I wish joy and happiness for both of them – can we deny fate itself?”
Nathalie looked at Kavel, squeezed his hand, bowed to queen Titania, a sprite before a towering archfey, but when Nathalie straightened up the power of the spiritual warrior was there and they seemed almost to be the same size.
“For my part, my heart will always be with Kavel,” she said simply. “Our souls were entwined and are still tied together. To be the spiritual leader of the Damphenite sprites I wish to have Kavel by my side. I know what is coming – and our strength combined will be key. I know this because he is my happiness, my heart, my foundation, just as I am his. Grant us this gift.”
Something seemed to settle in the air. A new kind of warmth in the summer court. Titania was smiling.
“We are a court of revelry but also strength, heart and purpose,” her voice was like the morning sun. “We are a people of stories. Who does not enjoy a good love story? Against all odds across the realms once bound by stone and soul – it’s the stuff legends are made of.”
She clapped her hands. The ground shifted and changed. The Master of Revelries stood before them and behind stretched an unfathomable labyrinth of impossible complexity.
There to greet them was a satyr in the livery of the Master of Revelries. “Yes gentle and fair folk it is I, Kruxeral, and we shall have a challenge of the heart. Lost in the labyrinth of your mind following the thread of your love or some such lyrical nonsense. If you can find each other, get to the centre and find the tree. Expect fey fuckery. Off you go.”
Sorrel felt reality vanish beneath her and she hurtled through an insane void until she crashed to earth in a narrow gap between two high, thorny hedges that instantly shot out tendrils, waving blindly through the air in search of her, she could feel it. Either these grasping vines could sense the drops of fey blood her father had left her, or they could smell the stench of the human blood that drowned out those drops.
She felt dazed and dizzy as if the walls of the maze were pulsing in and out of existence, moving like the slithering tentacles of a carnivorous plant entrapping its prey in some venomous web. Off in the distance she heard the low rumble of thunder. A storm? A timer? What awaited them if they failed? For her brother, heartbreak. But as a tendril corkscrewed into her flesh, writhing beneath her skin, she feared that might be the least of their problems.
She checked her escape belt for operations behind enemy lines – survival kit, cutting tools, flint and striker, weapons, food, check. The House procedures in such a deployment were clear and, in her case, poorly prepared. No operational plans or maps, no previous reconnaissance, unable to establish secure perimeter or temporary base, flanks vulnerable to assault so the first step – and fortunately also the entire task - was field contact with commander or team operatives.
Kavel, she was sure, would find Nathalie. The greater the size of the team, the easier for other members to detect and identify. Zola and Lolli would have a wide search field, but Sterel would be focussed on Nathalie. Ergo, if Sorrel secured direct contact with Sterel they had a reasonable chance of assembling four of the six in rapid order.
And Sterel was a fine figure of a sprite if Sorrel said so herself.
Sorrel locked into that feeling of… admiration? And the traces of fey blood in her sent magicks out into the tangle searching for the subject of her interest. She felt the familiar tug of inevitable drawing together of creatures and followed her instinct where it lead her.
“Sorrel!” Sterel seemed happy to see her.
Sorrel permitted herself a smile, then got down to business. “This labyrinth is fucking with me. Can you find Nathalie?”
Sterel nodded, and the two warriors drew weapons and provided cover for each other until they head Kavel’s massive form crashing through the undefended undergrowth. Just before she could reach out to her brother, they all cocked their heads as Zola’s magic called out them.
Soon they were moving as one towards the tree in the centre of this feyfucked maze and they could almost hear a crowd in the distance.
Sorrel caught sight of a stag in front of a huge tree. Startled, the majestic beast bounded away, and in front of them an enormous trunk clambered up into the sky. Scattered in the roots where Damphenite crystals, and Sorrel began to see a connection – this looked as if someone had grown a new species from crystal seeds. But who could play with nature that way?
“You can make a doorway from that tree that could connect across the planes,” Queen Titania’s voice rang out across what was clearly now an arena. The labyrinth had vanished, and they were surround by fey aristocracy applauding politely. “It would take some work, but it would be a pathway. You could make doors that are connected. You would have to make them in the same time and same place and put them where you wanted them to be. Kavel can carve the wood. Nathalie can carve the stone.”
“Does that mean…?” Nathalie’s voice stumbled.
“This tree is my gift to you,” Titania’s voice echoed across time and space. “For the man who is the mountain himself, I have one more gift if he is willing to accept it.
Kavel could barely speak. “I am grateful for the gift you have given me and Nathalie and I accept every gift,” he mumbled humbly.
Titania smiled, took out her sword, which glowed green at the hilt and the brightest gold at the tip, then planted it into the ground, where vines sprouted and wrapped around his limbs imbuing him with great, Fey strength. He looked invincible.
Sorrel cleared her throat and looked at the queen who nodded, smiled and stood aside. Sorrel bowed and stepped forward. She looked at her brother, her eyes shining.
“I met Kavel within weeks of jumping ashore in Kantas,” she spoke hesitantly at first. “We were tracking a T-Rex and found dark things afoot in the Angelbark. As per, I now realise. He was sorely wounded by a corpse flower but as we slept on a little high ground deep in the forest I remember, just before I closed my eyes, watching him stand guard over us. In that den of horror, I slept like a baby knowing he was keeping me safe.”
She smiled at the memory. Kavel’s thundering power as he sprinted towards the corpse flowers, spinning and gliding as his ancient instincts were alerted by a regurgitated wolf corpse staggering to its feet just in time to meet Kavel’s crashing blow that scattered its foetid bones. Then the flower closing on him, his muscles faltering, him falling as if dead. Her arrow slicing into his floral opponent and finally, as they rested, Kavel stitching his wounds, barely flinching as he rammed what appeared to be a nail in and out of his flesh, tugging what appeared to be a jungle vine until it knitted his skin together.
“We have travelled and fought together in so many grim places,” she continued. “The City of Sigil, the heart of the Feythorn and, for which I can never thank him enough, Phlegethos, the fourth layer of Hell, the realm of fire and pain.”
Again, her mind drifted to the crucible of torment they had fallen into as they arrived in Phlegethos, a bone-dry basin of vastness and death with the ground cracked like a series of savage wounds, all labouring under a low, heavy sky that throbbed with a deep dark red. The immensity of it burned Sorrel’s brain. As far as the eye could see there was a mournful pan of emptiness roasting in the intense fire of eternal malignant sorcery.
All she could smell was the soul crushing scent of her own death. Her skin felt like it had been scraped off by a sandstorm. The cinders burned her feet raw through her boots, and the distant sounds of screeching, shambling, screaming creatures played at the edge of her hearing. And Kavel striding past and bounding off up a nearby hill to get the lay of the land.
Sorrel watched him with a mix of envy and relief. Zola, Marto, herself and Velania were scarred by filth, battlesore and heart sick. Silvia – she felt her heart skip a beat – Silvia had been blindsided by the brutality of the infinite distances stretching out under skies that offered only destruction.
Kavel was untouched by the horror. He had great faith, she realised, not in the amorphous approval of a deity but in himself and his training. It defied the fury of Hell itself.
“He is the mightiest warrior I have met,” her eyes stared up at the sky for fear her tears would be visible. “And yet he is more than a warrior. He is not cruel or merciless, he fights without fear or anger, and he never scorns his foes. When I lost Silvia, it was Kavel who comforted me. When my sisters threw my life into chaos, it was Kavel who showed me the way. And when he fell in love with Nathalie, he was prepared to tear out his own heart so that she remained the spiritual leader of her people.”
She gazed over at her brother, her eyes shining with tears. “Look at that man,” she shook her head. “His strength is Olympian and I know what he will say – that it was deadlifts and presses and never missing leg day…. That Kavel’s Strength Corner made him the mightiest goliath the world has seen."
She paused, smiled.
"But brother, I beg to differ. I believe you are blessed by more than your dedication to training. I believe you are raised up by the love of your friends and the devotion of Nathalie. Warriors grow through training. Heroes grow through sacrifice. You came to Kantas searching for the legend of a mountain that moved. You told me you were mistaken – but you were wrong. You have become that mountain. You have become that legend. And tonight I pay tribute to all you have won - with the greatest of these being Nathalie's love.”
