Post by Zola Rhomdaen on Jul 9, 2024 8:44:22 GMT
(Continued from Lonesome Dreams and That Lonely Feeling.)
Three days later.
Shadows coiling. Wings unfurling.
Matches can barely make out the figure lurking in the corner of the room, but he feels their eyes on him. Studying, making notes — not with malice, but with a clinical, calculating air.
Startled, he jolts up from the bed and—
And then the dream ends.
Matches wakes up from the nightmare with a start, aiming his scaled hand forward, with a flame already beginning to dance in its palm. He breathes heavily and looks around the room, but there is no sign of the black-winged figure. As soon as they appear, the flames start to dissipate.
But the crackle of the fire wakes Zola, who stirs beside him and blinks groggy-eyed. “Mmm…?”
He runs a gentle hand through her hair, comforting himself and her. “Morning, gorgeous… Might have a little problem on our hands.”
She opens her eye fully and pushes herself up. “What? What do you mean?”
“If I were to guess that your feller, the devil, was tall, dark, winged, and a bit cold and calculating, would I be right?” Matches gives a somewhat nervous side eye to her, still partly looking at the corner he saw the figure in.
Zola feels her breath lodging in her throat suddenly. Her gaze darts around the room, searching for danger, before it lands at the twin swords Castor and Pollux lying sheathed on the table. “He was here?” she asks, a clear edge to her voice as the muscles in her shoulders tense. “You saw him?”
“I saw someone like that… Right there in the corner.” He extends a finger to point, then groans and holds his head in his hand. “Or… It might’ve been in a dream? I don’t know when I woke up…”
“A dream?” Her stare flicks between Matches and the corner he’s pointing at. “And…what was he doing?”
“Just…looking at me… Studying me.” Matches looks at the corner again, then feels shiver down his spine and pulls himself out of bed. “Fuck me.”
He pulls on his underwear from the night before, then fishes a box out of his trouser pocket and opens it to find a cigar inside. He holds it in his mouth as he walks out to the balcony.
Zola sits in silence for a long moment, as though her body has been paralysed. A horrible dread is churning around in the pit of her stomach. The room feels so small and stifling all of a sudden.
But it’s Matches whose dreams were invaded, not hers. It’s clear how shaken he is. Finally, she wills herself to slip off the bed and puts on a silken night robe as she joins him on the balcony, placing a gentle hand on his back.
“I’m sorry, Matches,” she murmurs. “I never meant for you to get caught up between us. I don’t know why he was… Maybe it was nothing?”
Not even she can make that sound convincing, even to herself.
Matches clicks his fingers together, producing a small flame from his thumb, and lighting the cigar in his mouth. He takes a deep drag before taking it out and puffing out a couple rings of smoke. His breathing calms down following this, and he scratches his forehead with one claw. “I hardly doubt it was nothing. And, look, honestly it’s not your fault, darling. I heard you when you said you were getting married to an actual devil and decided I’d stick around.”
Zola leans her head against his bicep, breathing deeply in and out, staring out to the dark city with the gaze of a thousand yards. “No, you’re right. I have to think several steps ahead, for that is what he does.”
A faint golden glow illuminates the outline of Daring Heights. Dawn is breaking. She thinks back to her time in Faerûn, waking every day at this hour for one year, to face the sun as it rises. That was the trial of the sword dancer: a drow would have to make peace with the very thing that hurts her eyes.
It was much easier for Zola, who, blessed with the magic of her hag mothers, can see in sunlight just fine. Perhaps then, because of this, the real trial for her lies elsewhere.
…It’s time.
Zola looks up at her lover. “Matches, I must go on a journey. Alone. I’ve put this off for far too long. I do not know when I shall return. Have you got somewhere safe you can stay in?”
He looks down at her and concern falls on his features. “Oi, don’t start doing something drastic now, I thought being alone was a real bad thing for you these days.”
“Don’t worry about me. And besides, it wouldn’t be a walk of penance without an element of suffering…” A hand goes up to caress his face, and she smiles at him. “But at the same time, thank you, for worrying. You’re sweet, you know that?”
He softens a little at her touch, and his hand moves around her waist in response. “Well don’t go shouting it too loud for the rest of the city to hear.” He takes another puff of his cigar, blowing the smoke directly upwards so as to not get in Zola’s face, then he sighs. “Orianna will have me if I need it, and I’ve got Astaros’ vessel too. Can you tell me where you’re going?”
Zola playfully plucks the cigar from his mouth and puts it between her lips to suck on it. “First to Port Ffirst, then back to the Witching Court,” she says, looking back at the city skyline and holding the cigar between two fingers, smoke jetting out of her nostrils as she speaks. “I’ll come back, I promise. But you can’t stay here. Need to cleanse this whole place with holy water.”
Matches rests his head on her shoulder from behind and gives a little sigh. “Alright, I won’t question you on what needs doing. You’re the expert.” He then tilts his head and softly kisses her neck. “But do you need to go and do it right now?”
A shiver of pleasure crawls down her body as she feels his claws pressing lightly into her skin and his lips on her neck. “If I stay here longer, we’re just going to fuck all day, so…”
“Rude. I’m very capable of self restraint.” He reaches his arm around her to take the cigar back from her and place it back in his mouth, savouring a long drag.
“Okay. One round, then?”
“Seeing as you’ll be cleansing this room with holy water anyway…”
Matches spins her around with one arm, keeping the other with his cigar in hand at a length away as he pulls her in and kisses deeply.
She slips on a plain white dress of cotton and ties a loop of cloth over her empty eye socket.
She sets off from Daring Heights after a big and filling breakfast, a canteen of water slung over one shoulder, bare feet treading over cobble and then dirt. Even as dusk falls, and her legs turn into trunks of aching pain and her eyelids threaten to congeal shut, she carries on walking, stopping only to refill her canteen in wayside ponds.
The road to Port Ffirst is 45 miles long. Her hair and dress become matted brown with dust, her gait is reduced to an unsteady wobble — the princess of a noble house now looks like a beggar.
One must be humbled if they wish to go before a god and beg forgiveness.
And a god is needed at one’s side when facing the devil.
Yet Zola finds that it is not hunger or hurt that is the greatest test. The loneliness that gnaws at her, having made its forceful return since her goodbye with Matches, is unrelenting. It has burrowed itself under her skin like round-mouthed worms with a thousand razor teeth, eating her away from the inside.
At times, she spots fellow travellers passing by on horseback on a mule-drawn cart, gawking curiously at the strange drow they see. She wishes desperately to speak up, to stop and strike up a conversation — about the weather, about the news… Anything, anyone would do. But by the time she finds the strength to lift her chin and open her mouth, the travellers have gone, and she is alone on an empty road.
In the darkness of night, her weary eye thinks it sees the shape of a winged figure standing among the trees. But it is only wind and shadows, chipping away at the brittle edges of her mind.
Though, in truth, she never once believes that it is him. She would know if he was here. She knows well the slither of his gaze on her body, the coldness that makes her shiver and gasp and sets off a thrumming low in her belly.
Even now, she misses his corrupting touch, and it has little to do with Something Lonely.
When she ambles into the centre of Port Ffirst at the break of a new day, she crouches down over a partially open manhole and forlornly calls out a friend’s name, over and over. Folks passing by give her the strangest looks.
Eventually, a blue kobold head pops up out of the hole, staring at her with large yellow eyes. “Zola? What are you doing here? I mean, nice to see you.” Digs flicks his tongue out a couple of times. “You smell different.”
“Hi, Digs. Can I…come into your house?”
“Yeah sure!” For not the most sociable person, he seems oddly excited by the idea, but furrows his brow as he looks Zola up and down. “You okay? You look like you’ve had a hard day.”
“I did, but it is not without purpose.” Her voice sounds like it’s on the verge of cracking. “But don’t worry about me.”
She follows Digs down into the sewers, and patiently waits for him to disable the traps he had set along the dripping tunnels. All the while she stands far away from him for fear of infecting him with the horrid loneliness that ails her.
As Zola is led through into the patch of the sewers that Digs has claimed as his own, he looks nervous before opening the final door. “I’ve been working on something, but please tell me if you think it looks bad.”
“Um…okay?”
Digs opens the door and his lair is much as Zola remembers it. The massive hanging blue dragon skull, the poorly taxidermied and stinking white dragon head on the wall, the aerobatic assault course are all still there, but there are additions. In the centre of the room sits a wooden table and two benches that bear the Daring Council crest burned into them. The skull, still menacing, has a small doily draped over it. One of the straw training dummies has been repurposed as a mannequin, but is mostly hidden behind an intricately carved and expensive-looking wooden room divider, and Digs’s hammock is full to the brim with brightly coloured scatter cushions. None of these features match or present a cohesive theme in any conceivable way.
Zola looks around and a small smile forms on her lips. “It’s nice, Digs. I don’t know what you were worried about. You made it look more like home.”
Digs beams so broadly that a tear forms in the corner of his eye. “You look like you need a drink. Do you want a drink? I have iced tea I made, or that old wine I lifted from the fancy place.”
“Wait, you mean from my family’s mansion?”
He freezes at the question. “Oh, were we…umm…not doing that? I only took the really old dusty bottles I thought nobody would miss!”
“Oh, okay. It’s not from the barrel with the trap inside it, right? If so, I’ll have that, please and thank you.”
Digs breathes a sigh of relief as he gestures for her to take a seat at his new table and scurries off to fetch the bottle of fine elven wine. He rips the cork out with his teeth, takes a swig from it, and hands the bottle to Zola. She glugs it straightaway, the vintage soaking her parched throat, and she lets out a satisfied sigh when she’s done.
“So what did you want to talk about?” asks Digs.
“Oh…we can get to that later. How are you doing, Digs? What’s been happening with you?”
“Umm…a few things. Do you know Calla? Well, Calla’s a statue and I know what you’re going to say but I got everyone to run and I felt bad but I think they would have died if I didn’t. I found a dragon called Azhural who says he can help and gave me a sword but he wants me to be a Herald and I don’t trust him, but I want Calla back and Frigus and Orianna are mad at me. Kallos is being weird about it. Oh, and I bought some scatter cushions. Well, I bought some of them.” He rattles all this off in that child-like manner of his and scratches the back of his head. “You don’t look okay. Are you sure you don’t want to talk about your thing?”
Zola blinks a few times and shakes her head. “Whoa, slow down. Calla’s dead? And an archwyrm asked you to be his Herald?”
Digs scrunches his knees up to his chin nervously. “She, umm…broke her pact with her uncle and now he owns her soul, but she’s a Herald now and that means she got turned into a statue instead, and we saw her walking around in the Fugue Plane. Everyone else wanted to fight, but we weren’t ready. Orianna has a plan, I think.”
“Right.” Zola doesn’t understand much of this and quickly gives up on trying to. “I’m sorry for your loss, Digs. And the Herald thing… How do we feel about that?”
Digs breaks eye contact with her, looking at the carved wooden screen. “I feel like I want to find a boat to somewhere else and start again. I think I don’t want to piss off an archwyrm of death and souls and stuff when we’re trying to put Calla’s soul back in her body. So kinda waiting to see how that plays out. Azhural did show how bad dragons are punished, but it’s after someone else kills them, so they get to keep hurting people until then.”
Zola follows Digs’s gaze, sensing the accursed armour’s presence behind the screen. She had sometimes wondered if her kind words of encouragement were what led him to that evil thing, or if he was going to take whatever meaning he wanted — whatever he could use to justify his crusade against dragons — no matter what she said. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between. Perhaps the two of them are more alike than it may seem.
There is no anger or judgement in her eye anymore, only quiet acceptance. She has no right to judge him for falling into temptation.
Digs studies her expression. “Do you need me to help with something? Do you want me to break into somewhere and steal stuff off your family again? It’s really not a problem. It’s not even, like, hard.”
Her attention snaps back to the kobold, pulled back from a thousand miles away. She takes a deep breath and gathers her courage.
“I have a confession to make, Digs. I told a lie. I had deceived both you and myself.”
“Oh.” He cocks his head, “That’s okay, I’ve lied to you loads of times. And lots of other people. I’m trying to stop. What about? I’m not mad or anything.”
“After the confrontation with my father, when we spoke over Blessed’s corpse, you asked me how it felt to hurt the family that had hurt me. I said that…it did not feel good, and that I had no desire to hurt them. It didn’t feel good to me, Digs, because it wasn’t enough. I wanted to do more than visit physical violence upon my parents. I wanted to take away everything they had ever built — the house, the only thing they ever truly loved — and make them watch as I do. And then, and only then, could I kill them.” Zola glances down at the stolen bottle of wine hanging from her grip. “That is why I promised Tebrin I would wed him. He was to be my revenge. My soul is consumed by vengeance and pain and hatred…and I can no longer pretend otherwise.”
Digs listens to her enraptured, physically coming out of his shell of nerves as she speaks, but gives her a while to sit after she finishes. “Wow. That’s…kinda nice to hear.”
The lines on Zola’s face are deepened by the gloom of the underground lair, glyphs of guilt and fatigue agonisingly etched into her features. “I wear a cloak of righteousness to hide the savage heart underneath. I said all the right things, all the things one would expect to hear from a paladin. I…I think I even said that I don't want to be a kinslayer, but…” She swallows a painful lump in her throat, the act of breathing becoming difficult for her. “The truth is, if I were to find myself standing over my mother with sword in hand, I don’t know if I could stop myself. The truth is your knight and I have nothing in common, Digs.”
“Okay, maybe, but look at who you are and look at who I am. I used to wish I was more like Dorsey, but that changed when I realised I wished I was more like Zola.” Digs starts rummaging through his backpack and offers her a bloodstained but otherwise nice-looking, monogrammed handkerchief. “Look, I guess even if it’s something you’re ashamed of, lying to everyone and devoting your whole life to revenge or whatever”—he gestures widely to the den filled with grisly trophies—“if it’s a problem Zola has to deal with too? That there’s a little bit of someone like you that’s like someone like me? Maybe that makes me feel a little less shitty.” He shrugs.
Zola does not take the offered handkerchief. She sets the bottle down on the table, her wide, unblinking gaze never breaking from Digs. “I had thought it was the case,” she says quietly, “that you took too much after me. This is why I have chosen to come here for my penance. I am telling you that you are a fool.”
Digs cocks his head as he chews on a cork. “How do you mean?”
“I am not someone you should look up to, Digs. A heart poisoned with vengeance is ripe to be fed upon by evil. Evil…like Tebrin. He saw within me my desires when I had been blind to it, and he almost lured me down a path of endless bloodshed. Please, do not let the same thing happen to you.”
Digs studies the look on Zola’s face, looks at the way she’s holding herself, and at the dirt on her usually immaculate dress. “So… Tebrin’s evil and made you feel like this? That’s why you’re here?” He pulls a shortsword out from a hidden scabbard fitted to the bottom of the table with absolutely zero hesitation. “Let’s go. Who else is coming?”
Zola shakes her head. “No, Digs. Tebrin didn’t do anything but take advantage of my bloodthirst — I am here, in this state, as an effort to protect myself and the people I care about from him.”
Digs once again looks confused. “Oh. So what’s the plan? If he’s going to hurt you and the people you care about then we stop him, right? You’re the one who said he’s evil.”
“I— We cannot hurt him. He has access to my mothers. If I act against him now, he would…”
Zola’s voice trails off into a sigh. She tilts her head up at the ceiling, pursing her trembling lips as she holds back a sob. “This is not a problem that can be solved with force. If it wasn’t the consequence of my choices, I would have said the gods are testing me.” She chokes out a single laugh. “I have a plan, but it’s going to take time. I came here to tell you one thing, Digs: don’t make the same mistakes as I did. Justice and retribution are not one and the same. They’re like…twins; people like to mix them up, sometimes on purpose. I certainly did.”
Digs sits and listens, and simmers down from being quite so ready to act. “Well, as long as you have a plan, I guess that makes me less worried for you, you know? But I think I’ve already started to learn a bit more about the whole justice thing. Azhural had me judge a dragon soul and…it made me think a lot. I don’t agree with everything he said, but I’m thinking about it okay? So…if you’ve got a lot of stuff to worry about, don’t let me add to it. I think I’m…gonna be okay.”
He tries to smile sympathetically, but is bad at it. “Well, I’m going to try to be okay anyway. I think that counts for something.”
A relieved smile spreads slowly across Zola’s face. The tension in her muscles begin to loosen, even if just a little. She drops to her knees to be at eye-level with him and spreads her arms. “Can I give you a hug?”
Digs’s face falls. He’s about as far as it gets from a hugger, but the sorry state of the girl before him must’ve moved him as he grits his teeth and spreads his arms.
Seeing his expression, Zola backs away. “If you don’t want to, that’s fine, Digs. You don’t have to do unpleasant things for my sake.”
He starts to put his arms down, and then puts them back up again. “No, I…I think I’m done with keeping people at a distance.”
Digs is almost swept off his feet as he is pulled into Zola’s embrace. Her exhausted body lumbers down on his small frame, and after a short while, she pulls back and looks at him. “By the way, since you’re a Herald now, do you know Matches?”
Digs winces. “I’m not a Herald yet, they just want me to be one.” He thinks to himself. “Matches is…the Herald of Vulcanax right? I haven’t met either of them, but Orianna talks about him sometimes. I think she’s worried about him. She worries about a lot of people.”
“Well, that’s good to know,” Zola says, grinning. She rises to her feet and turns towards the tunnels leading out of the lair. She’s so tired, but the walk of penance is only halfway done. “Thank you for your hospitality, Digs. I must continue on my journey.”
Visions of the past play and replay in the back of her tired mind. Beulah and Lillian crumbling into pillars of ash whilst debris of wood and stone falls around them. A maimed and mutilated Ceryneian hind, twitching helplessly in a pool of its own blood. Blessed’s limp body lying on the floor of the Rhomdaen villa. Tebrin’s savage grin, a promise of union and bloodshed.
But there are also the events that preceded the loss of her hag mothers, so oft overshadowed by the memory of grief: Zola wandering through the Memory Broker’s maze seemingly alone, but not alone; her friends, though invisible to her eye, were there every step of the way — sending her messages of encouragement, giving her the strength to endure the trials and tribulations.
And it is from this memory she finds renewed strength today, as she travels to the Mountain Palace for the final stretch.
Zola stumbles into the small, hidden chapel of Eilistraee — starved, filthy, and fatigued — and collapses onto all fours. Gasping raggedly, she drags herself down the aisle towards the towering marble statue of Eilistraee behind the altar. By blood and by sweat, she will finish this walk of penance.
In her hand, she clutches white-knuckled the holy symbol she once carried as a paladin: an image of the nude dancing goddess, with an ominous crack across the medallion that hews her body in two.
Zola stops before the altar, her shoulders heaving painfully with every breath. The chapel is empty and quiet around her. Even the din from the Moon and Web Tavern next door isn’t as loud today.
The silence fills the room and takes on a suffocating pressure, the like Zola has never experienced in this room before. Like too many pairs of eyes are watching her expectantly, waiting to see what she does. As a performer, she is used to having everyone’s attention, but…this feels odd. Like the eyes are trying to pull something from her, and she doesn’t know what.
Despite this, despite feeling their eyes on her, Zola is alone.
No. She swallows these paradoxical feelings of stage fright and isolation. The show must go on.
She raises her head to look up at the statue.
“Dark Maiden, do you hear me?”
The silence gives no answer.
Zola adjusts her position such that she is sitting on the floor with her legs folded under her. Her head lolls back and forth, eyes shut and mouth wheezing for air. “O Lady Eilistraee,” she whispers aloud. “I have come to ask for your forgiveness. I beg you, hear me, for I intend to become the first matron in Aeschira who serves you.”
The silence shifts — an uneasy feeling, like some of those watching eyes are not approving of that plan, but there is a faintly familiar feeling to it, something she remembers from the many prayers she had given to Eilistraee in the past.
“Do you not want this?” Zola ventures. “Too long we have toiled in obscurity. Too long have we let the many legs of Lolth trample over us, just so we could stay pure in our imaginations. I do not believe this is the only way. I believe…I believe that we can make a difference and still be true to ourselves. If only we would try.”
The response in the room is like a kaleidoscope shifting:
Pale light from sconces around the chapel bounces off the statue’s dark marble skin, giving it an aura like animated purity and joy.
The darkest corners of the room seem to expand and then cave in on themselves as Zola hears the scratches of a tiny spider slipping under one of the pews.
The crisp sound of a page turning anchors her to a feeling of nostalgia. It seems to urge her to continue.
A maternal presence seems to swell with positivity, like pride or happiness maybe, though fleeting and distant.
A fifth presence seems to twist at Zola’s words, neither positive nor malicious in its watching, settled into the room like the dust on the backs of the pews.
Finally, another gazer creeps in on the edges of perception. It feels like it has been dragged into this place, familiar and alien at the same time.
The sensations come and go all at once whilst seeming to be one after the over. It’s a disorienting feeling, likely to make most people think they’ve maybe just overdone the walking for the day. But most people do not have a goddess watching them from up high as Zola does.
Zola’s eyelids flutter open and she looks upon the serene, youthful face of Eilistraee wrought in marble. Has it always been smiling like that?
A smile of her own forms upon her cracked lips. Then the sword dancer takes a breath and, in a near-broken voice, sings a hymn:
“Make me an instrument of Thy peace;
Where hate rules, let me bring love,
Where malice, forgiveness,
Where disputes, reconciliation,
Where error, truth,
Where doubt, belief,
Where despair, hope,
Where darkness, moonlight,
Where sorrow, joy!
For she who gives, receives,
She who forgets herself, finds,
She who forgives, receives forgiveness.”
A warmth washes over Zola — a feeling she knows through her divine bond with Eilistraee; it was not often felt, but it never failed to bring her comfort when she did feel it.
The murky pall in the corners of the room becomes more visible, though they still lie dormant.
The flutter of parchment sheaves cries out in excitement and joy that is otherwise unspoken.
A bloom of a feeling like home rises in the distance before fading away again.
The presence settled in the back of the chapel seems coolly unmoved, but the squirming creeper has gone, bolted out through the front doors to retreat to someplace lonelier.
From the back of Zola’s mind comes a sound, a combination of familiar voices — Sarin’s and Zola’s own:
The Dark Maiden is always with us.
Relief rushes through all of Zola at those words. She almost collapses again from the sheer, immediate feeling of every tense muscle in her body unwinding.
“Thank you,” she murmurs hoarsely.
She glances down at the cracked holy symbol in her hand. The silver medallion feels heavy, heavier than it should. Decisions have been made since she last wore this and she can feel the weight of them in this broken thing that remains.
However, another thought comes to mind. Something from one of Sarin’s sermons about being unburdened by one’s past choices; what matters now is using what has been gained from those choices to inform new ones…
And as she thinks of Sarin, she hears that shuffling sound of pages again. This time, she can pinpoint where it’s coming from: a plain, unassuming door to the right of the altar. The door to the chaplain’s private quarters.
“Sarin? Are you there?” she calls out.
“Ah! Zola!” is the surprised, not-so-surprised response she hears before the door is thrown open. Sarin Aleannder is as he ever was, totally naked and smelling of incense from this morning’s service, a huge smile over his face that lights up all the more for seeing Zola. “What a pleasant surprise!”
Looking past him into the room, she spies a large book of liturgical rites lying open on the bed. Oh, of course. Zola chuckles weakly as she realises the identities of those currently “present” in the chapel with their eyes on her. “You heard me back there, didn’t you?”
“Well, I… What I mean is…” Sarin lets out a defeated sigh. “Ah, you have me. Yes, I heard you come in, but I did not wish to intrude. I have my questions, but first — please, Zola, how are you? You look exhausted, please take a seat.”
Zola gives him a crooked smile. It’s been so long since she last saw him — her sweetest, oldest friend. She strains to pull herself up onto the front pew and settles down for a catch-up with the priest.
She has her goddess back.
She will get her mothers back.
And in time, even the devil will come crawling back to her.
Co-written with
Harry
Tom M
Anthony
“The Matron’s Hymn” adapted from a 13th century prayer by St. Francis of Assisi — from Prayers of the Middle Ages (2015), edited by J. Manning Potts.
Three days later.
Shadows coiling. Wings unfurling.
Matches can barely make out the figure lurking in the corner of the room, but he feels their eyes on him. Studying, making notes — not with malice, but with a clinical, calculating air.
Startled, he jolts up from the bed and—
And then the dream ends.
Matches wakes up from the nightmare with a start, aiming his scaled hand forward, with a flame already beginning to dance in its palm. He breathes heavily and looks around the room, but there is no sign of the black-winged figure. As soon as they appear, the flames start to dissipate.
But the crackle of the fire wakes Zola, who stirs beside him and blinks groggy-eyed. “Mmm…?”
He runs a gentle hand through her hair, comforting himself and her. “Morning, gorgeous… Might have a little problem on our hands.”
She opens her eye fully and pushes herself up. “What? What do you mean?”
“If I were to guess that your feller, the devil, was tall, dark, winged, and a bit cold and calculating, would I be right?” Matches gives a somewhat nervous side eye to her, still partly looking at the corner he saw the figure in.
Zola feels her breath lodging in her throat suddenly. Her gaze darts around the room, searching for danger, before it lands at the twin swords Castor and Pollux lying sheathed on the table. “He was here?” she asks, a clear edge to her voice as the muscles in her shoulders tense. “You saw him?”
“I saw someone like that… Right there in the corner.” He extends a finger to point, then groans and holds his head in his hand. “Or… It might’ve been in a dream? I don’t know when I woke up…”
“A dream?” Her stare flicks between Matches and the corner he’s pointing at. “And…what was he doing?”
“Just…looking at me… Studying me.” Matches looks at the corner again, then feels shiver down his spine and pulls himself out of bed. “Fuck me.”
He pulls on his underwear from the night before, then fishes a box out of his trouser pocket and opens it to find a cigar inside. He holds it in his mouth as he walks out to the balcony.
Zola sits in silence for a long moment, as though her body has been paralysed. A horrible dread is churning around in the pit of her stomach. The room feels so small and stifling all of a sudden.
But it’s Matches whose dreams were invaded, not hers. It’s clear how shaken he is. Finally, she wills herself to slip off the bed and puts on a silken night robe as she joins him on the balcony, placing a gentle hand on his back.
“I’m sorry, Matches,” she murmurs. “I never meant for you to get caught up between us. I don’t know why he was… Maybe it was nothing?”
Not even she can make that sound convincing, even to herself.
Matches clicks his fingers together, producing a small flame from his thumb, and lighting the cigar in his mouth. He takes a deep drag before taking it out and puffing out a couple rings of smoke. His breathing calms down following this, and he scratches his forehead with one claw. “I hardly doubt it was nothing. And, look, honestly it’s not your fault, darling. I heard you when you said you were getting married to an actual devil and decided I’d stick around.”
Zola leans her head against his bicep, breathing deeply in and out, staring out to the dark city with the gaze of a thousand yards. “No, you’re right. I have to think several steps ahead, for that is what he does.”
A faint golden glow illuminates the outline of Daring Heights. Dawn is breaking. She thinks back to her time in Faerûn, waking every day at this hour for one year, to face the sun as it rises. That was the trial of the sword dancer: a drow would have to make peace with the very thing that hurts her eyes.
It was much easier for Zola, who, blessed with the magic of her hag mothers, can see in sunlight just fine. Perhaps then, because of this, the real trial for her lies elsewhere.
…It’s time.
Zola looks up at her lover. “Matches, I must go on a journey. Alone. I’ve put this off for far too long. I do not know when I shall return. Have you got somewhere safe you can stay in?”
He looks down at her and concern falls on his features. “Oi, don’t start doing something drastic now, I thought being alone was a real bad thing for you these days.”
“Don’t worry about me. And besides, it wouldn’t be a walk of penance without an element of suffering…” A hand goes up to caress his face, and she smiles at him. “But at the same time, thank you, for worrying. You’re sweet, you know that?”
He softens a little at her touch, and his hand moves around her waist in response. “Well don’t go shouting it too loud for the rest of the city to hear.” He takes another puff of his cigar, blowing the smoke directly upwards so as to not get in Zola’s face, then he sighs. “Orianna will have me if I need it, and I’ve got Astaros’ vessel too. Can you tell me where you’re going?”
Zola playfully plucks the cigar from his mouth and puts it between her lips to suck on it. “First to Port Ffirst, then back to the Witching Court,” she says, looking back at the city skyline and holding the cigar between two fingers, smoke jetting out of her nostrils as she speaks. “I’ll come back, I promise. But you can’t stay here. Need to cleanse this whole place with holy water.”
Matches rests his head on her shoulder from behind and gives a little sigh. “Alright, I won’t question you on what needs doing. You’re the expert.” He then tilts his head and softly kisses her neck. “But do you need to go and do it right now?”
A shiver of pleasure crawls down her body as she feels his claws pressing lightly into her skin and his lips on her neck. “If I stay here longer, we’re just going to fuck all day, so…”
“Rude. I’m very capable of self restraint.” He reaches his arm around her to take the cigar back from her and place it back in his mouth, savouring a long drag.
“Okay. One round, then?”
“Seeing as you’ll be cleansing this room with holy water anyway…”
Matches spins her around with one arm, keeping the other with his cigar in hand at a length away as he pulls her in and kisses deeply.
She slips on a plain white dress of cotton and ties a loop of cloth over her empty eye socket.
She sets off from Daring Heights after a big and filling breakfast, a canteen of water slung over one shoulder, bare feet treading over cobble and then dirt. Even as dusk falls, and her legs turn into trunks of aching pain and her eyelids threaten to congeal shut, she carries on walking, stopping only to refill her canteen in wayside ponds.
The road to Port Ffirst is 45 miles long. Her hair and dress become matted brown with dust, her gait is reduced to an unsteady wobble — the princess of a noble house now looks like a beggar.
One must be humbled if they wish to go before a god and beg forgiveness.
And a god is needed at one’s side when facing the devil.
Yet Zola finds that it is not hunger or hurt that is the greatest test. The loneliness that gnaws at her, having made its forceful return since her goodbye with Matches, is unrelenting. It has burrowed itself under her skin like round-mouthed worms with a thousand razor teeth, eating her away from the inside.
At times, she spots fellow travellers passing by on horseback on a mule-drawn cart, gawking curiously at the strange drow they see. She wishes desperately to speak up, to stop and strike up a conversation — about the weather, about the news… Anything, anyone would do. But by the time she finds the strength to lift her chin and open her mouth, the travellers have gone, and she is alone on an empty road.
In the darkness of night, her weary eye thinks it sees the shape of a winged figure standing among the trees. But it is only wind and shadows, chipping away at the brittle edges of her mind.
Though, in truth, she never once believes that it is him. She would know if he was here. She knows well the slither of his gaze on her body, the coldness that makes her shiver and gasp and sets off a thrumming low in her belly.
Even now, she misses his corrupting touch, and it has little to do with Something Lonely.
When she ambles into the centre of Port Ffirst at the break of a new day, she crouches down over a partially open manhole and forlornly calls out a friend’s name, over and over. Folks passing by give her the strangest looks.
Eventually, a blue kobold head pops up out of the hole, staring at her with large yellow eyes. “Zola? What are you doing here? I mean, nice to see you.” Digs flicks his tongue out a couple of times. “You smell different.”
“Hi, Digs. Can I…come into your house?”
“Yeah sure!” For not the most sociable person, he seems oddly excited by the idea, but furrows his brow as he looks Zola up and down. “You okay? You look like you’ve had a hard day.”
“I did, but it is not without purpose.” Her voice sounds like it’s on the verge of cracking. “But don’t worry about me.”
She follows Digs down into the sewers, and patiently waits for him to disable the traps he had set along the dripping tunnels. All the while she stands far away from him for fear of infecting him with the horrid loneliness that ails her.
As Zola is led through into the patch of the sewers that Digs has claimed as his own, he looks nervous before opening the final door. “I’ve been working on something, but please tell me if you think it looks bad.”
“Um…okay?”
Digs opens the door and his lair is much as Zola remembers it. The massive hanging blue dragon skull, the poorly taxidermied and stinking white dragon head on the wall, the aerobatic assault course are all still there, but there are additions. In the centre of the room sits a wooden table and two benches that bear the Daring Council crest burned into them. The skull, still menacing, has a small doily draped over it. One of the straw training dummies has been repurposed as a mannequin, but is mostly hidden behind an intricately carved and expensive-looking wooden room divider, and Digs’s hammock is full to the brim with brightly coloured scatter cushions. None of these features match or present a cohesive theme in any conceivable way.
Zola looks around and a small smile forms on her lips. “It’s nice, Digs. I don’t know what you were worried about. You made it look more like home.”
Digs beams so broadly that a tear forms in the corner of his eye. “You look like you need a drink. Do you want a drink? I have iced tea I made, or that old wine I lifted from the fancy place.”
“Wait, you mean from my family’s mansion?”
He freezes at the question. “Oh, were we…umm…not doing that? I only took the really old dusty bottles I thought nobody would miss!”
“Oh, okay. It’s not from the barrel with the trap inside it, right? If so, I’ll have that, please and thank you.”
Digs breathes a sigh of relief as he gestures for her to take a seat at his new table and scurries off to fetch the bottle of fine elven wine. He rips the cork out with his teeth, takes a swig from it, and hands the bottle to Zola. She glugs it straightaway, the vintage soaking her parched throat, and she lets out a satisfied sigh when she’s done.
“So what did you want to talk about?” asks Digs.
“Oh…we can get to that later. How are you doing, Digs? What’s been happening with you?”
“Umm…a few things. Do you know Calla? Well, Calla’s a statue and I know what you’re going to say but I got everyone to run and I felt bad but I think they would have died if I didn’t. I found a dragon called Azhural who says he can help and gave me a sword but he wants me to be a Herald and I don’t trust him, but I want Calla back and Frigus and Orianna are mad at me. Kallos is being weird about it. Oh, and I bought some scatter cushions. Well, I bought some of them.” He rattles all this off in that child-like manner of his and scratches the back of his head. “You don’t look okay. Are you sure you don’t want to talk about your thing?”
Zola blinks a few times and shakes her head. “Whoa, slow down. Calla’s dead? And an archwyrm asked you to be his Herald?”
Digs scrunches his knees up to his chin nervously. “She, umm…broke her pact with her uncle and now he owns her soul, but she’s a Herald now and that means she got turned into a statue instead, and we saw her walking around in the Fugue Plane. Everyone else wanted to fight, but we weren’t ready. Orianna has a plan, I think.”
“Right.” Zola doesn’t understand much of this and quickly gives up on trying to. “I’m sorry for your loss, Digs. And the Herald thing… How do we feel about that?”
Digs breaks eye contact with her, looking at the carved wooden screen. “I feel like I want to find a boat to somewhere else and start again. I think I don’t want to piss off an archwyrm of death and souls and stuff when we’re trying to put Calla’s soul back in her body. So kinda waiting to see how that plays out. Azhural did show how bad dragons are punished, but it’s after someone else kills them, so they get to keep hurting people until then.”
Zola follows Digs’s gaze, sensing the accursed armour’s presence behind the screen. She had sometimes wondered if her kind words of encouragement were what led him to that evil thing, or if he was going to take whatever meaning he wanted — whatever he could use to justify his crusade against dragons — no matter what she said. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between. Perhaps the two of them are more alike than it may seem.
There is no anger or judgement in her eye anymore, only quiet acceptance. She has no right to judge him for falling into temptation.
Digs studies her expression. “Do you need me to help with something? Do you want me to break into somewhere and steal stuff off your family again? It’s really not a problem. It’s not even, like, hard.”
Her attention snaps back to the kobold, pulled back from a thousand miles away. She takes a deep breath and gathers her courage.
“I have a confession to make, Digs. I told a lie. I had deceived both you and myself.”
“Oh.” He cocks his head, “That’s okay, I’ve lied to you loads of times. And lots of other people. I’m trying to stop. What about? I’m not mad or anything.”
“After the confrontation with my father, when we spoke over Blessed’s corpse, you asked me how it felt to hurt the family that had hurt me. I said that…it did not feel good, and that I had no desire to hurt them. It didn’t feel good to me, Digs, because it wasn’t enough. I wanted to do more than visit physical violence upon my parents. I wanted to take away everything they had ever built — the house, the only thing they ever truly loved — and make them watch as I do. And then, and only then, could I kill them.” Zola glances down at the stolen bottle of wine hanging from her grip. “That is why I promised Tebrin I would wed him. He was to be my revenge. My soul is consumed by vengeance and pain and hatred…and I can no longer pretend otherwise.”
Digs listens to her enraptured, physically coming out of his shell of nerves as she speaks, but gives her a while to sit after she finishes. “Wow. That’s…kinda nice to hear.”
The lines on Zola’s face are deepened by the gloom of the underground lair, glyphs of guilt and fatigue agonisingly etched into her features. “I wear a cloak of righteousness to hide the savage heart underneath. I said all the right things, all the things one would expect to hear from a paladin. I…I think I even said that I don't want to be a kinslayer, but…” She swallows a painful lump in her throat, the act of breathing becoming difficult for her. “The truth is, if I were to find myself standing over my mother with sword in hand, I don’t know if I could stop myself. The truth is your knight and I have nothing in common, Digs.”
“Okay, maybe, but look at who you are and look at who I am. I used to wish I was more like Dorsey, but that changed when I realised I wished I was more like Zola.” Digs starts rummaging through his backpack and offers her a bloodstained but otherwise nice-looking, monogrammed handkerchief. “Look, I guess even if it’s something you’re ashamed of, lying to everyone and devoting your whole life to revenge or whatever”—he gestures widely to the den filled with grisly trophies—“if it’s a problem Zola has to deal with too? That there’s a little bit of someone like you that’s like someone like me? Maybe that makes me feel a little less shitty.” He shrugs.
Zola does not take the offered handkerchief. She sets the bottle down on the table, her wide, unblinking gaze never breaking from Digs. “I had thought it was the case,” she says quietly, “that you took too much after me. This is why I have chosen to come here for my penance. I am telling you that you are a fool.”
Digs cocks his head as he chews on a cork. “How do you mean?”
“I am not someone you should look up to, Digs. A heart poisoned with vengeance is ripe to be fed upon by evil. Evil…like Tebrin. He saw within me my desires when I had been blind to it, and he almost lured me down a path of endless bloodshed. Please, do not let the same thing happen to you.”
Digs studies the look on Zola’s face, looks at the way she’s holding herself, and at the dirt on her usually immaculate dress. “So… Tebrin’s evil and made you feel like this? That’s why you’re here?” He pulls a shortsword out from a hidden scabbard fitted to the bottom of the table with absolutely zero hesitation. “Let’s go. Who else is coming?”
Zola shakes her head. “No, Digs. Tebrin didn’t do anything but take advantage of my bloodthirst — I am here, in this state, as an effort to protect myself and the people I care about from him.”
Digs once again looks confused. “Oh. So what’s the plan? If he’s going to hurt you and the people you care about then we stop him, right? You’re the one who said he’s evil.”
“I— We cannot hurt him. He has access to my mothers. If I act against him now, he would…”
Zola’s voice trails off into a sigh. She tilts her head up at the ceiling, pursing her trembling lips as she holds back a sob. “This is not a problem that can be solved with force. If it wasn’t the consequence of my choices, I would have said the gods are testing me.” She chokes out a single laugh. “I have a plan, but it’s going to take time. I came here to tell you one thing, Digs: don’t make the same mistakes as I did. Justice and retribution are not one and the same. They’re like…twins; people like to mix them up, sometimes on purpose. I certainly did.”
Digs sits and listens, and simmers down from being quite so ready to act. “Well, as long as you have a plan, I guess that makes me less worried for you, you know? But I think I’ve already started to learn a bit more about the whole justice thing. Azhural had me judge a dragon soul and…it made me think a lot. I don’t agree with everything he said, but I’m thinking about it okay? So…if you’ve got a lot of stuff to worry about, don’t let me add to it. I think I’m…gonna be okay.”
He tries to smile sympathetically, but is bad at it. “Well, I’m going to try to be okay anyway. I think that counts for something.”
A relieved smile spreads slowly across Zola’s face. The tension in her muscles begin to loosen, even if just a little. She drops to her knees to be at eye-level with him and spreads her arms. “Can I give you a hug?”
Digs’s face falls. He’s about as far as it gets from a hugger, but the sorry state of the girl before him must’ve moved him as he grits his teeth and spreads his arms.
Seeing his expression, Zola backs away. “If you don’t want to, that’s fine, Digs. You don’t have to do unpleasant things for my sake.”
He starts to put his arms down, and then puts them back up again. “No, I…I think I’m done with keeping people at a distance.”
Digs is almost swept off his feet as he is pulled into Zola’s embrace. Her exhausted body lumbers down on his small frame, and after a short while, she pulls back and looks at him. “By the way, since you’re a Herald now, do you know Matches?”
Digs winces. “I’m not a Herald yet, they just want me to be one.” He thinks to himself. “Matches is…the Herald of Vulcanax right? I haven’t met either of them, but Orianna talks about him sometimes. I think she’s worried about him. She worries about a lot of people.”
“Well, that’s good to know,” Zola says, grinning. She rises to her feet and turns towards the tunnels leading out of the lair. She’s so tired, but the walk of penance is only halfway done. “Thank you for your hospitality, Digs. I must continue on my journey.”
Visions of the past play and replay in the back of her tired mind. Beulah and Lillian crumbling into pillars of ash whilst debris of wood and stone falls around them. A maimed and mutilated Ceryneian hind, twitching helplessly in a pool of its own blood. Blessed’s limp body lying on the floor of the Rhomdaen villa. Tebrin’s savage grin, a promise of union and bloodshed.
But there are also the events that preceded the loss of her hag mothers, so oft overshadowed by the memory of grief: Zola wandering through the Memory Broker’s maze seemingly alone, but not alone; her friends, though invisible to her eye, were there every step of the way — sending her messages of encouragement, giving her the strength to endure the trials and tribulations.
And it is from this memory she finds renewed strength today, as she travels to the Mountain Palace for the final stretch.
Zola stumbles into the small, hidden chapel of Eilistraee — starved, filthy, and fatigued — and collapses onto all fours. Gasping raggedly, she drags herself down the aisle towards the towering marble statue of Eilistraee behind the altar. By blood and by sweat, she will finish this walk of penance.
In her hand, she clutches white-knuckled the holy symbol she once carried as a paladin: an image of the nude dancing goddess, with an ominous crack across the medallion that hews her body in two.
Zola stops before the altar, her shoulders heaving painfully with every breath. The chapel is empty and quiet around her. Even the din from the Moon and Web Tavern next door isn’t as loud today.
The silence fills the room and takes on a suffocating pressure, the like Zola has never experienced in this room before. Like too many pairs of eyes are watching her expectantly, waiting to see what she does. As a performer, she is used to having everyone’s attention, but…this feels odd. Like the eyes are trying to pull something from her, and she doesn’t know what.
Despite this, despite feeling their eyes on her, Zola is alone.
No. She swallows these paradoxical feelings of stage fright and isolation. The show must go on.
She raises her head to look up at the statue.
“Dark Maiden, do you hear me?”
The silence gives no answer.
Zola adjusts her position such that she is sitting on the floor with her legs folded under her. Her head lolls back and forth, eyes shut and mouth wheezing for air. “O Lady Eilistraee,” she whispers aloud. “I have come to ask for your forgiveness. I beg you, hear me, for I intend to become the first matron in Aeschira who serves you.”
The silence shifts — an uneasy feeling, like some of those watching eyes are not approving of that plan, but there is a faintly familiar feeling to it, something she remembers from the many prayers she had given to Eilistraee in the past.
“Do you not want this?” Zola ventures. “Too long we have toiled in obscurity. Too long have we let the many legs of Lolth trample over us, just so we could stay pure in our imaginations. I do not believe this is the only way. I believe…I believe that we can make a difference and still be true to ourselves. If only we would try.”
The response in the room is like a kaleidoscope shifting:
Pale light from sconces around the chapel bounces off the statue’s dark marble skin, giving it an aura like animated purity and joy.
The darkest corners of the room seem to expand and then cave in on themselves as Zola hears the scratches of a tiny spider slipping under one of the pews.
The crisp sound of a page turning anchors her to a feeling of nostalgia. It seems to urge her to continue.
A maternal presence seems to swell with positivity, like pride or happiness maybe, though fleeting and distant.
A fifth presence seems to twist at Zola’s words, neither positive nor malicious in its watching, settled into the room like the dust on the backs of the pews.
Finally, another gazer creeps in on the edges of perception. It feels like it has been dragged into this place, familiar and alien at the same time.
The sensations come and go all at once whilst seeming to be one after the over. It’s a disorienting feeling, likely to make most people think they’ve maybe just overdone the walking for the day. But most people do not have a goddess watching them from up high as Zola does.
Zola’s eyelids flutter open and she looks upon the serene, youthful face of Eilistraee wrought in marble. Has it always been smiling like that?
A smile of her own forms upon her cracked lips. Then the sword dancer takes a breath and, in a near-broken voice, sings a hymn:
“Make me an instrument of Thy peace;
Where hate rules, let me bring love,
Where malice, forgiveness,
Where disputes, reconciliation,
Where error, truth,
Where doubt, belief,
Where despair, hope,
Where darkness, moonlight,
Where sorrow, joy!
For she who gives, receives,
She who forgets herself, finds,
She who forgives, receives forgiveness.”
A warmth washes over Zola — a feeling she knows through her divine bond with Eilistraee; it was not often felt, but it never failed to bring her comfort when she did feel it.
The murky pall in the corners of the room becomes more visible, though they still lie dormant.
The flutter of parchment sheaves cries out in excitement and joy that is otherwise unspoken.
A bloom of a feeling like home rises in the distance before fading away again.
The presence settled in the back of the chapel seems coolly unmoved, but the squirming creeper has gone, bolted out through the front doors to retreat to someplace lonelier.
From the back of Zola’s mind comes a sound, a combination of familiar voices — Sarin’s and Zola’s own:
The Dark Maiden is always with us.
Relief rushes through all of Zola at those words. She almost collapses again from the sheer, immediate feeling of every tense muscle in her body unwinding.
“Thank you,” she murmurs hoarsely.
She glances down at the cracked holy symbol in her hand. The silver medallion feels heavy, heavier than it should. Decisions have been made since she last wore this and she can feel the weight of them in this broken thing that remains.
However, another thought comes to mind. Something from one of Sarin’s sermons about being unburdened by one’s past choices; what matters now is using what has been gained from those choices to inform new ones…
And as she thinks of Sarin, she hears that shuffling sound of pages again. This time, she can pinpoint where it’s coming from: a plain, unassuming door to the right of the altar. The door to the chaplain’s private quarters.
“Sarin? Are you there?” she calls out.
“Ah! Zola!” is the surprised, not-so-surprised response she hears before the door is thrown open. Sarin Aleannder is as he ever was, totally naked and smelling of incense from this morning’s service, a huge smile over his face that lights up all the more for seeing Zola. “What a pleasant surprise!”
Looking past him into the room, she spies a large book of liturgical rites lying open on the bed. Oh, of course. Zola chuckles weakly as she realises the identities of those currently “present” in the chapel with their eyes on her. “You heard me back there, didn’t you?”
“Well, I… What I mean is…” Sarin lets out a defeated sigh. “Ah, you have me. Yes, I heard you come in, but I did not wish to intrude. I have my questions, but first — please, Zola, how are you? You look exhausted, please take a seat.”
Zola gives him a crooked smile. It’s been so long since she last saw him — her sweetest, oldest friend. She strains to pull herself up onto the front pew and settles down for a catch-up with the priest.
She has her goddess back.
She will get her mothers back.
And in time, even the devil will come crawling back to her.
Co-written with
Harry
Tom M
Anthony
“The Matron’s Hymn” adapted from a 13th century prayer by St. Francis of Assisi — from Prayers of the Middle Ages (2015), edited by J. Manning Potts.