#Vrae Zilivna

[svartalfhild]

Half-Empty

Rating: M, to be safe

Genre: Fantasy, Angst, Humor

Words: 2,696

Summary: Vrae Zilivna, bard and secret Ravenloft escapee, has been working at a tavern and cabaret for a couple of weeks now. She's starting to get into the swing of things, but the swing is chaotic, and her grief will not do her the courtesy of sitting in the sidelines until her shift is over.

Content Warnings: discussion of sex work, brief blood/gore, PTSD

A/N: This is a small story that details a moment in the life of my DnD character, a drow bard who is from Ravenloft, but escapes to the Prime Material Plane for our campaign. This story takes place during the campaign.

Previous Stories: The Oracle and the Officer, (Un)bearable, Shattered, The Mirror is in the Eye of the Muse, Cold, For the Dead We Revel, For the Living We Mourn, Dreaming in the Dark and Waking in the Light, The Nightmaven, Vespera Dignitatis, From the Mists

~ ~ ~

The end of the week was a busy time for the tavern and cabaret known as The Deep Chalice, and as such, Vrae was expected to be working.  She hadn’t been employed there for long, only two weeks now, but she was learning the way of things quickly enough.  The regulars and her colleagues alike were all about as strange as she would expect of a place like this; it was why she’d come here in the first place: to be among her fellow freaks and outcasts.

The owner, Madam Grimella, ran a tight ship, but she wasn’t unkind and she certainly looked after everyone.  She was a human of middle age with long black hair silvering at the sides that was always arranged in some elaborate style, and she perpetually had a red silk shawl draped on her shoulders or around her elbows, no matter what else she was wearing.  She had a flair for the dramatic, even in the more mundane moments of the day, as if she would die if she were ever a little too normal about life.

Several of her employees were cut from the same cloth in one fashion or another, one of the better examples being a dancer named Excitement, who was a bright red tiefling with hair in a darker shade and big golden eyes that seemed to flicker ever so slightly as if backlit by flames.  Her horns were long and angular and a pair of fangs showed themselves whenever she smiled, which was often.  She was a bubbly, talkative sort with an irrepressible zest for life, and Vrae didn’t really understand her, but she was an excellent performer, and that was all that mattered at the end of the day.  Vrae was in need of reliable coworkers, not friends.  She was cordial, amicable even, but always emotionally distant with her new circle of acquaintances.  When she got attached to people, it always resulted in death and destruction, so she wasn’t keen to make such mistakes again.

While this was sometimes challenging with the staff, it was quite easily done with the customers, even the regulars.  It was effortless for her to give them everything and nothing.  She could bare her soul in a song, bare her skin in a dance, and still be a complete mystery to her audience, as if they were looking at her through the keyhole of her boudoir.  They could see her beauty, but they would never see the skeletons in her closet.

Tonight was a night when she was asked to dance, since the scheduled headliner, a young human woman named Helinna, was under the weather.  Vrae asked the tiefling lute player, Drefor, to play something dark, and she went about her business dazzling the tavern goers with a scarf dance using a sheer black cloth and a little prestidigitation.  Even the scatterbrained wizard who was usually ranting about obscure arcane theory in the corner stopped and watched when his younger friend nudged him.  She completed the performance by putting out every candle in the room just as she struck a particularly tantalizing pose.  Being underground, this meant it was pitch black to all but those with darkvision, and when she returned the light, she was gone from the stage.  There was an eruption of applause that she enjoyed from behind a curtain before slipping backstage and around so she could make her way to the darker end of the bar in peace once the next act began.  Staeran, the burly human barkeep, already had a mead waiting for her when she arrived.

“Lady Wispcaller?” she heard a young man address her only a few minutes later, and she looked around to see the wizard’s friend.  She’d seen this man around here a couple of times before.  She recalled his name was Setric.  He was a willowy, square-faced fellow with floppy blond hair, tailored blue robes, and the confident air of a rich boy who fancied himself a rebel because he dared to study the arcane and spent time in the city’s seedy underbelly.  He was an open book to her, and not one she was interested in reading.  His cards, however…

“Yes?” she responded, pulling a tarokka card seemingly from thin air as she turned to him.  The Trader.  She smiled wryly to herself and returned the card to her deck in the same manner in which she’d summoned it.

“I was wondering if you had any prior arrangements for the evening?”  It was a classy way to ask what he really wanted to know, and she could tell he thought his conventional looks and proper manner would get him somewhere with someone like her.  She wondered what he would say if he knew she used to assassinate rich men like him in their beds.

“I don’t.”

“Then I wondered if I might…”  Setric reached for her waist, and she slid from his grasp.

“You can’t afford me,” she told him firmly, and he frowned.

“Surely you can see that I’m more than capable of paying handsomely.”  He gestured to himself, confirming her suspicions about his ego.

“Oh, I’m well aware of your deep pockets, and that should tell you exactly how dreadfully unaffordable I am, especially when you’re not very good at keeping an eye on your purse.”  Vrae held up his fat coinpurse, filled with probably more money than she’d make in a month, and offered it to him as he gaped at her.  “You might want to learn the rules of the street a little better before you start trying to play in it.  Now, I suggest you find a girl in your price range or go back to your friend.  I’m sure Edvard is dying to tell you about the importance of the sun and moon in transmutation magic or some such thing.”  With this, she shooed the stunned young mage away and finished her mead.

In truth, there probably wasn’t a single soul in this world she’d allow into her bed, whether it be for profit or pleasure.  She knew she could easily make a lot of money if she did, but something in her felt weary at the thought.  She didn’t want to touch or be touched anymore, even for a practical purpose.  Unconsciously, she pulled her silk wrap more tightly around herself and crossed her arms.  She touched the small silver locket that hung from her neck on a black leather cord.  She always felt so exposed wearing it in the open, as she had to when she did burlesque, but she was careful to choose costumes that would make it look more like an accessory than a treasured item.  No one had yet dared to ask about it, but she had a few well-prepared lies for anyone who might.  A sensible person would just take the damn thing off, but the idea felt profoundly wrong to her, almost as if it had a curse upon it, compelling her to keep it on, and in a way, it did.  She had loved and lost the man who had given it to her, but she felt forever bound to him, and this locket was the physical manifestation of that.

“Vrae!”  At the sound of Madam Grimella calling her name, she let go of her locket and quickly turned around to see her employer hurrying over to her, looking a little concerned about something.  “Vrae, dear, there you are.”  The woman came right up to her and leaned in close to whisper.  “Could you run out and fetch a healer?  Excitement’s hurt her ankle rather badly and we simply cannot have two dancers down this weekend.”

“Oh, there’s no need for that.  I think I have enough energy left today to help her myself,” Vrae replied with a dismissive wave, and Grimella frowned at her.

“Help her yourself?  How?”

“With magic, of course.”  Vrae gave her a sly smile before sweeping past her and heading on up the stairs to the room kept by her cheerful tiefling colleague.  She found Excitement sitting up on her bed, clutching her left leg and looking distressed.  “Hello, Excitement.  I heard your ankle’s gotten into a spot of trouble.”

“Oh!  Vrae!  Don’t you worry about me.  Madam G. sent for a healer.”  The poor woman put on a brave face, but she was clearly in pain.

“I’m your healer.”

“What?”  Excitement gave a giggle as she said this, as if she were unsure whether to be amused or not, and Vrae carefully sat down beside her.

“May I?” the bard asked, reaching for her colleague’s leg, and when Excitement gave a hesitant nod, she gently cradled her heel and began to hum a haunting tune, almost like a dark lullaby, delivered with a reassuring smile.  Her patient stared at her in bewilderment, which slowly turned into joy.

“Oh, I feel much better!” she exclaimed when the song ended.  “How did you do that?”

“Music is a powerful thing, d’anthe.  Especially if you know how to make the universe listen.”  Vrae set aside Excitement’s leg and primly folded her hands in her lap.  “You should be ready to dance again once the stiffness is gone.”  At this, the tiefling leapt forward and threw her arms around Vrae in a big hug.

“Thank you!  You’re the best!”

Vrae froze and her breath hitched.  Memories of Shaena Pencroft, her best friend, flashed violently through her mind.  Shaena, riding piggyback and whooping as Vrae ran down the beaches of Vradlock when they were teenagers.  Shaena, wrapping a blanket around her as she trembled after a brutal encounter with the constabulary.  Shaena, helping her up from the mud in the rain with the secret police in pursuit.  Shaena, lying dead on a stable floor in a pool of blood that gushed from her open throat.

“I’m not!”  Vrae reflexively pushed Excitement away.

“Oh, no!  Did I hurt you?”  Excitement touched the base of one of her horns self-consciously.

“No.  No, I…I’m not…I’m just not…good.  Please don’t give me more credit than I deserve.”

“Don’t be silly.  You’re a healer, and healers are always good people,” Excitement stated sweetly, and Vrae gave her a sad smile for her naïveté.

“I wish that were so.  But all the same, please don’t…hug me.”  Something finally clicked for Excitement at these words and her eyes widened.

“Oh!  Oh, I get it now.  You don’t like being touched.  Sorry about that.  My mama always says I get too carried away.  Is there a reason, or…?”  The question was a bit nosey, but Vrae was accustomed enough to her chatty nature by now to recognize it as well-meaning.

“Yes, but that is a story even this bard will not tell.”  She would let Excitement draw whatever conclusions she liked from that cryptic statement.  Excitement nodded and pulled her knees up to her chest to rest her chin on them.

“But you must have some juicy stories you can tell.  What about that locket?”  By the gods, this girl had a preternatural gift for innocently asking about the worst things.  Thankfully, Vrae was quite ready for this kind of inquiry.

“This?  This is merely a gift from an admirer that I thought pretty enough to keep.  No, I can do you much better than that, but if you want a delicious secret, you must first tell me one of your own,” she challenged with a playful smirk, and Excitement’s golden eyes lit up with interest.

“Alright, what do you wanna know?”

“Tell me, who is your favourite client?  You don’t need to give anymore detail than you’re comfortable with, of course.”

“Oh, that’s easy.  There’s this mage fella who comes in about once a month.  He’s a tiefling like me.  Gray with just the loveliest silver eyes.  He’s as serious as a funeral, but he’s very sweet to me.  Look at what he gave me!”  Excitement leapt up and went to her vanity to retrieve a bottle and a small tin, which bore ornate labels that declared them horn oil and horn wax respectively.  “I complained about my horns chipping, so he gave me these.  What a sweetheart!”  The products were magical too; Vrae sensed the abjuration magic in them.  Excitement would probably never know just how expensive this stuff was.

“Yes, I can certainly see why you like him,” Vrae replied with a wistful smile, absently brushing her fingers over her locket.

“Now your turn.”  Excitement flopped onto her stomach and rested her chin in her hands, eagerly awaiting her prize.

“Very well.  Many years ago, I journeyed to a beautiful kingdom that lay beside a lake of steam.  While I was there, I attended a lavish ball hosted by the royal family and tasted sweeter nectars there than you could ever imagine.  I was of course there to perform at the behest of the court, and when I sang for them and their guests, the crown prince fell madly in love with me.”  Excitement gasped in delight at this.

“What happened?”

“He asked me to dance, but I was not going to allow someone who had so much to have something from me for free.  I told him I would give him his dance if he would promise to teach me the dance of swords.”

“Ooh!”  There was a pause as a look of confusion came over Excitement’s face.  “What’s the dance of swords?”

“Fencing, darling.  Swordplay.”

“Oh, right.  Well, what’d he say?”

“He agreed to my terms.  He was a renowned swordsman, you see, and he thought it an easy enough task, but I proved to be a difficult student.  He would tell you it was because I was too brash, but in truth, I was just very distracting to him.”  Excitement giggled and kicked her feet at this.  “It took time and determination, but I learned the sword, and departed the kingdom soon thereafter, because the rest of the royal family did not approve of the attention their heir paid me.”

“Why?  There’s no harm in looking.”

“Maybe not, but here ‘attention’ means more than looking,” Vrae explained, and Excitement appeared to knock this around in her brain for a moment with minimal success.

“Oh, sex!” she burst out eventually.  It wasn’t exactly what Vrae had been going for, but she chose to roll with it.  “But I thought you-?”

“This was long before all of that.”

“Oh, wow.  So you could have been a princess?”

“I don’t think I was ever really in danger of that,” Vrae answered with a wry laugh, and her coworker looked disappointed.

“Would you have said yes if he’d asked?”

“Maybe.”  This seemed enough for Excitement, and she gave a small squeal of delight, kicking her feet some more.

“What’s going on up here?  If everyone’s alright now, there’s work to be done and distressingly few people to do it,” came the voice of Madam Grimella as she suddenly swept into the room, a few of her carefully arranged locks of hair hanging out of place.  Vrae immediately sat up straighter, but Excitement just gave a cheerful, fanged grin.

“Hey, Madam G.!  Don’t you worry; Vrae fixed me right up.  I’ll be back down in a minute.”

“What needs doing, ma’am?” Vrae asked.

“I need you to play the tune for Jesticles’ act.  Drefor has to help him with some sort of trick he’s planning.”  This news was not at all welcome, but Vrae didn’t let it show on her face.  Instead, she dutifully got up and made to return with their employer.

“Alright, see you later then, Excitement.  I have to go watch a clown strip.”

“Have fun!”  Vrae did not respond to this, as she did not trust herself to hide her contempt for the idea.

It was times like these that she was glad she had started to pick up mercenary work during the day.  Sure, clearing bats out of basements and harassing unethical wizards could be a bother, especially when she had to share the pay with a bunch of strange holy people and a manic kender, but there was more dignity in it than assisting Jesticles Mortimer in whatever fool thing he was planning to do on stage next.

[svartalfhild]

ssinjixuz |sɪndʒɪksuz| - Drow, n. A fight to the death between two people who were once lovers.

This is and illustration of the final confrontation between my Spirit Bard, Vrae Zilivna, and the Kargat agent Caspar Arden. The location is just outside of Nevuchar Springs, Darkon in Ravenloft.

[svartalfhild]

From the Mists

Rating: T

Genre: Fantasy, Angst, Hurt/Comfort

Words: 4,770

Summary: Vrae flees Kargat justice and is caught in the Mists, which take her to a strange world beyond Ravenloft and the Domains of Dread where the grass is greener, the sky is bluer, and the people are free.

A/N: This is a small story that details a moment in the life of my DnD character, a drow bard who is from Ravenloft, but escapes to the Prime Material Plane for our campaign. This story is about her escape.

Previous Stories: The Oracle and the Officer, (Un)bearable, Shattered, The Mirror is in the Eye of the Muse, Cold, For the Dead We Revel, For the Living We Mourn, Dreaming in the Dark and Waking in the Light, The Nightmaven, Vespera Dignitatis

~ ~ ~

The dense shifting whiteness of the Mists swallowed Vrae in a cold emptiness as the world she knew disappeared behind her.  She was running, running for her life and from her life, leaving behind a kingdom collapsing without its king and a man she both hated and loved, who had chosen to stay behind and sacrifice himself to buy her the chance to live.  The adrenaline of that gamble drove her forward as quickly as her slender legs could take her, and she begged whatever gods might be listening to not let her be lost in the Mists forever, to deliver her somewhere she could live and not let Caspar’s sacrifice be in vain.  She didn’t want to die a meaningless death.  She’d been ready to die by Caspar’s hand, but he had taken that off the table when he’d realized he loved her far more than the now empty throne he had so loyally and misguidedly served.  His moment of redemption had left her in grief and uncertainty.

As the adrenaline faded, Vrae’s pace slowed until it was barely more than a shuffle and she began to really feel the pain her body was in.  She was bleeding more than a simple tune could heal, deep red now staining her entire left side down to her hip.  Whether it was bloodloss or simply the nature of the Mists, she seemed to slowly drift out of time and reason.  She had no idea how long she’d been wandering now, and she began to hear distant voices in the haze, both familiar and unfamiliar alike.

“The loaves will be out in a minute; have some patience, luv,” called out the voice of her dearly departed friend, Shaena Pencroft.

“Les invités seront morts au matin,” whispered a masculine voice in High Mordentish.

“May Lolth wrend your flesh before the eyes of all!” spat a feminine voice before there was a choking noise.  It sounded disturbingly like Olvenriel, Vrae’s resistance cell leader, who was, like Shaena, long dead.

“Ce ar trebui să facem acum?” asked someone in a tone somewhere between hope and fear, speaking a language she was fairly certain was Balok, the language primarily of Barovia.

“If there’s something that can be done, we have to try,” a gentle but firm masculine voice insisted.

“Nau!  Nau!  Xuat xta’rl ukta!” a woman screamed desperately in Drow.  Gods, was that…was that her mother?

“Four rolls of ribbon.  Two green, two purple,” came the slow, craggy voice of the dragonborn tailor she once knew.

All of these voices and a dozen others came to Vrae out of the Mists, along with incoherent screaming, crying, and laughing.  The tailor’s words echoed in her mind.

“Four rolls of ribbon.  Two green, two purple,” she repeated, though she didn’t know why.  It felt like she was trying to comfort someone who wasn’t there, or maybe comfort herself.  Maybe she was the person who wasn’t really there.  She felt cold, wet grass touch her cheek, and a sense of relief washed over her.  She looked up and found she was lying in a dewy meadow under a starry sky.

“We made it,” said the voice she truly wanted to hear, and she turned her head to see Caspar lying in the grass beside her.

“We did,” she replied with a smile.  “What now?”

“I don’t know.  My life belongs to you now.  Whatever you choose, I will accept.”

“I choose peace.”  This earned Vrae a returned smile from Caspar, soft and sweet.  She reached out for his hand, but felt nothing, and when she looked down, he was gone.  “Caspar!” she cried, and she fell into darkness.

~ ~ ~

“She’s alive!  Come quickly!”

“She’s bleeding out.  Hold on.”

“By the gods, what happened to her?”

“Alert Matron Solanine.  The need may be dire.”

Distant voices once again reached Vrae’s ears.  She tried to move, to see what was going on, but her body felt as though it were made of lead.  Her eyes could only make out vague dark shapes above her.

“Caspar…where are you?  I can’t…I can’t feel you.  I’m lost…please don’t…don’t leave me.  I’m sorry…I’m…I’m so sorry,” she muttered.  There were lights and more voices, and hurried motion.  She was scared.  She was so scared.  “Four rolls of ribbon.  Two green, two purple.”  The voices grew more urgent.  Eyes gold like fire stared calmly at her, piercing her soul.  A gentle hand touched her side wound.  There was pain, so much pain.  She screamed until she couldn’t scream anymore.  She wanted out.  She had tasted freedom for just a moment, and she wanted it more desperately than anything.  She would chase it.  She would find that meadow where Caspar lay beneath the stars.  But it was all too much.  Her body couldn’t take it.  Those golden eyes willed her to be calm, even as every fibre of her being shrieked with rage and grief and longing.  Everything was dark and silent again.

~ ~ ~

Vrae awoke in a small dark room, which was fairly barren but for a simple wooden table bearing a cup and pitcher, a nightstand, and a chair in the corner.  The walls were a dark stone, and there was a window, which was shuttered.  The bed creaked loudly as she tried to sit up, and she groaned along with it as she found her muscles stiff and sore.  She also found that her hair was down and she was dressed not in her clothes, but in a simple gray cotton gown and nothing else.  The door at the far end of the room opened and a human woman of middle age wearing black robes entered carrying a bowl, a clean cloth, and a candlestick.  She gave a start upon seeing Vrae was awake and began speaking excitedly in a language Vrae didn’t recognize.  It almost sounded like Vaasi, but none of the words were familiar, though that didn’t necessarily mean anything; she only properly knew a few words of Vaasi.  The woman set the bowl, cloth, and candle on the table and hurried over to her, seeming to be encouraging her to lie back down.  Vrae tried to wave her off, but found herself too weak to resist the woman’s firm hand.

“Taler du vaasisk?” she asked, but the woman gave her an odd look, clearly not understanding.  Not Vaasi then.  “Loquerisne Darcone?”  Didn’t understand Darkonian.  “Vorbesti balocă?”  Nor Balok.  “Parlez-vous mordentique?  Oþþe Mordentisc?”  Nor Mordentish.  “Sprechen Sie Falkownisch?”  Nor Falkovnian.  Fuck, she didn’t know how to ask in any other human languages.  Was it worth it to try Drow, Elvish, or Draconic?  Where the hell was she?

“Sorry, I don’t know what you’re saying.  You speak Common, hun?”  Now that Vrae understood, with great relief, though the woman’s accent was very strange, and she wondered why she hadn’t just spoken Common from the start if she knew it.

“Yes,” she answered simply.

“Oh, good.  Now, as I was saying, don’t strain yourself.  You’ve had a rough few days, and we were starting to worry you wouldn’t wake up.”

“Who’s we?”  Vrae eyed the woman’s robes and saw black feathers sewn decoratively at the shoulders.  Perhaps she was in the care of the Keepers of the Feather.  That would be alright, she supposed.  There were far worse hands to be in.

“You’re in the Temple of the Raven Queen.  We found you lying on the ground not far from here after the fog cleared up.  You were in a real bad way, but Our Lady clearly decided it was not your time, so we brought you in and got you fixed up as best we could,” the cleric explained with a reassuring smile.  Vrae gave her a confused look.

“The Raven Queen?”  This question seemed to confuse the cleric in return, as if she could not conceive of someone being unfamiliar with her god.

“Where are you from?  There aren’t many lands where the name of Our Lady is unknown.”

“I’m from Darkon.  What domain is this?”

“Well, I don’t know about any domain, but you’re in the Breadth Between, just outside the city of Clandestine.  Though maybe you don’t know what that is either, seeing as Darkon’s not on any map I’ve ever seen.  How’d you get here anyway?”

“I walked through the Mists.”  The cleric seemed slightly disturbed by this answer.

“You…walked…through the Mists?”  Vrae didn’t understand what was so strange about what she’d said.

“Yes, that is how one travels from one domain to another, is it not?”  This frustratingly did not seem to clarify anything for her caretaker, though admittedly her slightly sarcastic tone probably hadn’t helped.

“I think perhaps you should have a talk with the matron.  She knows more about this kind of stuff than anyone else around here,” the cleric responded, her brow furrowed in concern and further bewilderment.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m…I’m not sure you’re from this plane.”

“Is this not Ravenloft?”  At the word Ravenloft, the cleric’s eyes went wide and she took a step back.

“I need to get the matron.  Please just relax and I’ll be back soon.”  Vrae watched her hurry from the room, taking the candle with her, and she leaned back into her pillow, which felt oddly plush for temple fare.  Her mind raced at the possibility that she was no longer in Ravenloft.  The idea felt ludicrous.  She’d heard many a tale of “outsiders” in Ravenloft, folk who came from places beyond the Domains of Dread.  She’d even met a couple in her time, strange people who knew nothing of the world and often seemed burdened with naïve minds and soft hearts.  But no one from Ravenloft ever left; no one ever went to the places beyond.  That was entirely unheard of.  Everyone just had a sense that that was against the rules somehow.  Maybe this was another dream.  Maybe she was dead.  Either of those options seemed more plausible.

After Vrae was left to ruminate for several minutes, the cleric returned as promised, and she was accompanied by a rather remarkable figure.  A woman in a beautiful, flowing black gown and an ornate black feathered headdress glided into the room, her pale face partially obscured by a veil of black tule accented with tiny pearls.  Her eyes were a brilliant gold that Vrae found quite familiar.

“We’ve met before,” Vrae said, tilting her head a little in curiosity.  “You were there when the priests brought me in.”

“Indeed.  I am the high priestess, Matron Solanine.  Your arrival caused quite a stir in the temple, I must say,” the high priestess answered in a gentle, slightly rasping voice.  “Alakae tells me you came here through the Mists of Ravenloft.”

“Yes.  Am I to understand that I am no longer in Ravenloft?”

“You are on the Prime Material Plane, the central crossroads of the cosmos.”  Vrae’s eyes widened a little at this, and Solanine came closer, the priestess now identified as Alakae pulling the corner chair over to the bed for the matron to sit in.

“The place beyond,” Vrae muttered in shock, and Solanine gave her a patient nod.

“Tell me, what is your understanding of your world’s place in the cosmos?”

“I…well, the histories tell us the world was plucked from the darkness of the Shadowfell by the darklords and given life from the spark they stole from the Dark Powers.  Whether that’s true or not is anybody’s guess; the darklords tell us only what they want us to believe.”

“There may be a kernel of truth to that story.  Scripture tells us that the Raven Queen gave a piece of her kingdom in the Shadowfell to the Dark Powers, and from it they built a new plane, a prison for the most detestable beings mortal worlds could offer.  Her price was governance over the Mists, from which she would watch the mortals, protecting the innocents caught in the machinations of such great evils, and she would be known to them as Ezra, Lady of the Mists,” Solanine explained, and Vrae gasped at the mention of Ezra.  She certainly knew of Ezra.  Her worship was not popular in Darkon and had suffered a splintering into starkly opposing sects, one devoted to protecting the people and the other devoted to appeasement of the Mists through sacrifice, with the latter having more power in a culture that gave up life and liberty as easily as drawing breath.  The Eternal Order, Darkon’s state religion, was the theological center of her country, which was a place that cared very little for religion to begin with.  They had been ruled by a wizard king who had taught them that true, respectable power rested with the arcane.

“Yes, I know that name.  I can’t say she’s popular in my country,” Vrae responded, and Solanine gave her a sad smile.

“I think there are very few places where Our Lady is popular, but that is to be expected, for death is her providence, and most mortals fear death above all else.”

“If death is her domain, then why did you save me?”

“Everyone has their proper time.  It was not yours.  It seems her will is for you to live, though her purpose in bringing you to another plane is unclear and will require some contemplation and study.”  Vrae noted the hint of concern in Solanine’s pensive expression as she said this.

“You must have ideas.”

“A few.  This is not the first time a path to another world has opened on this site, and I have to wonder if you are part of a larger pattern, or perhaps a portent, a message from the Raven Queen of something to come.”

“I know a thing or two about portents, though not from gods,” Vrae commented, reflexively reaching for a pouch at her hip that wasn’t there.  It was gone, like all of her possessions, and she could not feel her deck anywhere nearby, nor could she sense the spirits in this room, which was perhaps the most distressing thing of all.

“Your clothes are being cleaned and repaired.  Your other belongings have been kept safe.  Alakae, please fetch our guest’s effects.”  The high priestess turned to her subordinate, who gave a curt nod and hurried from the room.

“My name is Vrae Zilivna.  I was once a bard and fortune teller,” Vrae informed Solanine, whose eyes flashed with curiosity.

“And what are you now, Vrae Zilivna?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re welcome to remain here until you’ve figured it out.”  These words made Vrae feel strange, and she turned her head away, unable to bear Solanine’s earnest golden gaze any longer.

“A gracious offer, but I don’t wish to owe you any further debts than I already do.  I have nothing to give.”

“You owe us nothing, my child.  We give aid freely to those in need.”  That was perhaps the strangest thing Vrae had ever heard, and yet she could not deny the sincerity of it.  She was left speechless, unsure how to respond to someone who genuinely believed in charity.

Alakae returned a moment later with a ornately carved wooden box, which she set on the nightstand.  With some effort and help from Solanine, Vrae sat up and opened the box, finding her card case, her locket, and a small coin purse.  She snatched them up and quickly tied her locket back around her neck before pulling out her tarokka deck and shuffling it.  The clerics watched in interest, peering at the intricate white designs like weaving candle smoke on the backs of the black cards.  Vrae reached out for guidance of whatever spirits might be near, and she felt a tentative connection form.  She had gotten their attention, so she could test the waters of drawing power and wisdom from them.  Eventually, she stopped and pulled three cards.  The Broken One.  The Mists.  The Diviner.  That last card made her relax a little.  These clerics could be trusted.

“I see,” she muttered.

“What have you determined?” asked the matron.

“I will accept your offer.”  A warm smile spread across Alakae’s face at this, and Solanine gave a welcoming nod.

“And what do your cards say about the nature of your arrival?”

“There are strange forces at work.  You would be right to look into it.”  The vagueness of this response didn’t seem to bother Solanine.  She only gave another nod and gracefully rose from the chair.

“In that case, I will leave you to your rest and attend to the matter.  Thank you for answering my questions and please consider this temple your home while you recover.”

“Thank you, matron,” Vrae replied, still a little stunned by the open generosity of her caretakers, who soon left her in peace to contemplate her strange new situation.

~ ~ ~

The next few days were difficult for Vrae, both physically and emotionally.  It took some effort, but she was eventually able to get herself up and about.  The first time she left the building, she was blinded by the sunlight, which was so much brighter and more direct than anything she’d been accustomed to on her home plane.  She tripped and fell on a bit of loose earth as she stumbled around, leaving her in further embarrassment over how weak she was, but the priests were kind and provided her with a large black cloak to shield her from the sun and a cane carved with a raven’s head grip to help her hobble around the grounds until she recovered her strength.

She was able, in her convalescence, to take in the new world in which she found herself.  The temple stood atop a cliff overlooking a black beach cresting a calm, dark blue sea to the south and a large city sprawled across a river delta to the west.  Beautiful white-capped mountains rose from the east, casting long shadows over the land in the mornings.  The air here was salty from the sea, as one would expect, but it was much sweeter than the scent of the coasts she was so accustomed to.  She found she felt lighter in this place as well, as if she had been carrying a weight on her shoulders her whole life and it had been lifted.  The colours of this world also seemed more vibrant, the flora and fauna more vivacious.  Caspar would have loved to draw this landscape.

Upon recalling Caspar and the tender memories she had of watching him draw, her sense of wonder for this place was tainted by the crushing despair of all she had left behind in Ravenloft.  Caspar was most likely gone, slain by his own men, unable to seek any further redemption and be at her side.  Her homeland and its people, for whom she had fought and bled most of her life, were doomed, in the process of being consumed by the Mists.  She had truly lost everything.  Even her connection to the spirits of the dead had significantly diminished, leaving her more alone than she’d ever been in her entire life.

It was difficult to enjoy the vivid luxury of this plane with the utter failure and solitude of her life looming large over her soul, so she did the only thing she could: she stood at the cliffs and sang her heartbreak to the wind, letting it echo across the sea.

Matron Solanine came to stand with her and told her she had a beautiful voice, then gently inquired as to what warranted such a devastating lament, guessing it was related to whomever had given her the locket with such deeply romantic Elvish words inside.  Vrae did not deny it but answered with no more than an admission of a belief that the gifter was dead, along with everyone and everything else she’d ever cared about.  Ravenloft was an unforgiving world where goodness was always punished sooner or later.  She found this land soft and naïve by comparison.  Solanine advised her to go out and live and claim her freedom, for the best revenge against those who had wronged her was to exist in peace and fulfillment.  Bitterness would not serve her.

Vrae found it quite difficult to take this advice, but eventually, she made her way down to the city they called Clandestine to begin the process of rebuilding her life as a bard.  The priests had advised her to go to the Clearstream District, a place accustomed to catering to foreigners and taking in new talent for the many avenues of entertainment in the area.  She found it glamorous in a way she had never experienced before.  She’d been to metropolises and seen the great towers and grand cathedrals of Il Aluk, but what this city lacked in impressive architectural design it made up for in lavishness and energy.  This was where the city’s wealthy lived and indulged their desire for excitement and exotic goods.  Big markets filled with wares both familiar and foreign to her populated the square every morning.  Musicians busked on corners, which was illegal in Darkon, but seemed perfectly normal here.  In fact, Vrae could see no evidence of any sort of constabulary or guard, which seemed very strange, but she wasn’t exactly going to complain.  The fashion of the people was quite different from that of Darkon as well, with sewing techniques that she would consider old fashioned employed in their construction.  Red seemed a very common dye, which was bizarre to her, considering it was the colour of royalty in her homeland.  She learned that red was cheap here because of an abundance of organic reds found in the area, which stemmed from the influence of a colony of agriculturally minded imps that made their home just north of the city.  The locals seemed unbothered by this and even spoke fondly of the imps as members of the community.

The overall disposition of Clandestinians was quite varied, as their culture was made up of several different groups that had banded together, but one thing they all seemed to share was a desire for freedom and self-determination.  They tended to be extremely casual in their manners, free with their opinions, and generally far more easygoing than Vrae considered healthy, but it appeared to work for them, against all odds.

Vrae’s arrival in the city did not go unnoticed, but the Raven Queen clerics had prepared her for that.  Drow were quite rare in this part of the world, and on top of that, she dressed, spoke, and behaved in very foreign ways.  She was met less with suspicion and far more with curiosity.  She was an exotic oddity and she immediately set to work bending that to her advantage.

The taverns and inns of the Clearstream District were eager to have her perform after she demonstrated her skill, and coin quickly began to flow into her pockets.  She was able to find and afford lodging with ease, but never stayed in one place for more than a couple of days.  Eventually, she drew the attention of a few members of the upper crust, whereupon she was invited to stay with them and perform for them and their guests.  She was quite accustomed to this sort of work, to being an amusing fixture like a new toy in the homes of the rich.  It was a relatively easy way to exist, all things considered.  They paid her handsomely and let her alone when they didn’t have need of her services, allowing her to roam freely about their extravagant manses and surrounding grounds.

This comfortable living did not last, however.  After spending a week and a half among the affluent, their attitude towards her soured.  It began with a growing curiosity about her origins and abilities.  When it came to light that her morbid connection with the spirits of the dead arose not from a divine gift, but an arcane talent, the guests of her latest patron began to show her a certain degree of distrust.  This was how she learned that mages and other practitioners of the arcane arts were not well-regarded in this society, which was another greatly foreign concept to her, as she came from a land that venerated mages.  Thankfully, she could work past this with little trouble.  Distrust was not new to her in the slightest, having lived half her life as a spy.  When a rumor began about her having ties to the Temple of the Raven Queen, however, distrust gave way to xenophobia.  Her patron, a guildmaster associated with one of the artisan commissions named Hadryn Abrathi, insisted that he felt no animosity towards her, but he continued to bring guests into his home who did not respect her, and he did not stand up for her when they were rude, so she left both his home and the Clearstream District altogether.  She had had enough of being a plaything, to be used and discarded as the powerful saw fit, and she knew she would never belong with those people, so there was no point in wasting her life there.

Vrae explored the southern districts of the city, where the less affluent made their homes.  The Oceanview District, which contained the docks, seemed an idyllic part of town to her, with its simple but well-made buildings and crafts, friendly people, and perfect view of the beautiful sea.  She spent a night there before she realized she could not stay, not because of the people, but because she liked it so much.  She found she could not bear the thought of bringing her ill fortune to such a wonderful place, nor did she feel she fit into the affable culture there, so she moved on again, going to a district below the city that she had only heard whispers about.

The district in question was a section of the aqueducts called the Undercaw, and it was reputed to be the nest of Clandestine’s undesirables and forgotten poor.  She soon discovered that this included the city’s mages, who had apparently made the most of their surroundings.  The canals were underlit with arcane lights and the arches were shored up with strengthening sigils, but it was still the dirtiest, most dangerous place in Clandestine, and the air here had a pervasive sour earthy smell.  It was the closest thing to the desperate city squalor of her hometown she’d found on this plane of existence thus far.  Though she would never belong in this world, she at least knew how to live in the gutter with the freaks and the outcasts, and no one would question her place there.

Vrae found work and subsequent lodging at a tavern and burlesque club called The Deep Chalice.  The owner, Madam Grimella, was quite used to the strange and unusual from her employees and customers alike and didn’t bat an eye at her drow countenance or foreign manner.

“What can you do, then?” the woman asked Vrae upon their meeting, quickly and casually looking the bard up and down.

“A little of everything, but my greatest talents lie in music and fortune telling.”  Grimella’s sculpted eyebrows raised a little at the mention of fortune telling, like she sensed a unique business opportunity.

“If you can sing and dance when I need and draw customers in with your fortune telling, then one of our rooms is yours.”  She made a gesture urging Vrae to demonstrate, and the bard stepped up to the stage, which was currently empty, as it was mid-morning.  She stood tall and let her cloak fall from her shoulders before launching into a keening performance of an eerie Darkonian ballad.  She had learned that Clandestinians found the dramatic standards of her homeland new and fascinating, and Madam Grimella was no exception.  “Oh, well done!  Welcome to The Deep Chalice, my dear!  You’ll fit right in.”  Her new employer happily gave her a key to a room at the end of the hallway upstairs.  It was dark and a bit cramped and smelled of old wool, but it was perfect for her.

Perhaps establishing her new life in a dank hole in the ground had not been what Solanine had had in mind for her, but it was a way of being that was familiar, and it was what she deserved.  She could not live in the bright world above, not while the weight of her grief and her guilt clung to her so tightly, nor while she was still such an outsider to the ways of this place.  Peace and belonging were fantasies and the only real comforts were purpose and beauty, which she found in her work and on the black beach, looking out at the sea.

[svartalfhild]

👾

Vrae or Ves, your choice

(and only now that I ask about those two does it occur to me how well your username checks out!)

¿Por qué no los dos? And yes, I am a huge fan of dark elves; have been since I was about 9. :)

Vrae

Lost in Paradise by Evanescence

This song is near the end of Vrae's playlist. It speaks to the grief and guilt she feels after arriving in the Prime Material Plane. She feels responsible for the deaths of everyone Caspar killed when he was after her, and responsible for his death when he was finally turning towards redemption. She's been trying to put one foot in front of the other and leave that all behind in this beautiful new world, but she's only good at lying to herself, and lying to yourself isn't the same as moving on. She is wallowing in her misery and desperately yearning to see Caspar again, to make things right. The joys of this world are ultimately hollow for her without the man she always dreamed of escaping with.

Vivethys

Dance in the Fire by Nemesea

This is Vivethys' war song. This is her letting her darkness out and unleashing hell on her enemies. Fuck the Dominion. Fuck the Covenant. She screams Blood for the Pact. If you want to send your troops to Morrowind to burn her people's fields, she'll be waiting to show you what the fires of Morrowind really look like. Fjorun, of course, finds this fearless, dangerous side of her incredibly attractive, so there's a hint of that vibe here as well.

[svartalfhild]

Qiu Nazeri, Kor Tempest Cleric

As a servant of Hoar, God of Vengeance, Qiu is not your typical picture of a holy woman. Casting her spells through a gun she inherited from her slain brother, she seeks to protect her community, and she is certainly willing to kill anyone who proves themselves a threat.

Qiu is played by @tsunderin in the same campaign as my bard, Vrae Zilivna.

[svartalfhild]

✨when u get this, put 5 songs u actually listen to, publish. then, if you're comfortable, send this ask/tag 10 of your followers 🎶✨

tagged by @boxingcleverrr!

I'll do songs that have been on rotation a lot lately.

Ashes by The Longest Johns (This one is fresh to the pile and it slaps hard, but also it's the kind of song I can imagine Fjorun Fellblade singing because the lyrics are like...yeah that'd be a popular song for Ebonheart Pact soldiers.)

Misfit Love by Bexley (The latest addition to my Laudna/Ashton playlist.)

What Have You Done by Within Temptation (Latest addition to my Vrae Zilivna playlist because the Vrae/Caspar vibes are just spot on.)

Spillways by Ghost (Great song to be listening to when you're busy writing stories about a character with religious trauma.)

Burn Witch Burn by The 69 Eyes (I mean this just fucking slaps.)

10 is perhaps more tagging than I can muster, but here's a few: @betweenrivers-betweenworlds, @celamity, @theinvulnerabletide, @luvlins, @haledamage

[svartalfhild]

Vinelore Stillwater, Water Genasi Nature Cleric

A devout servant of Melora, the Wildmother, Vinelore is a quiet and kind soul with a hunger to explore all that her goddess has given the mortal world, particularly the seas for which her people have such an affinity. The city-state of Clandestine in which she has always lived is a tranquil and happy home for her, but the time may soon come for her to discover that not all is as it seems.

Vinelore is @wayfaring-rune's DnD character from the same campaign as my bard, Vrae Zilivna.

[svartalfhild]

Zero Future, Kender Wild Magic Barbarian

An orphan raised in The Eugenio Hopewell Academy for the Foundation of a Better Future, a Brighter Tomorrow, Zero doesn't know much about his origins or why his rage summons unpredictable magic, but now that he's aged out, he's trying to make his way in the world and find out who he is - and have a little fun along the way.

Zero is @betweenrivers-betweenworlds's DnD character from the same campaign as my bard, Vrae Zilivna.

[svartalfhild]

8, 13, 20

8. Do you have any OC family trees?

Yes, a few! Although whether or not they count would depend on your definition of OC family tree.

If we're counting ones where a canon character or two is involved, then perhaps my most extensive OC family tree is the one for my Bhaalspawn from the Baldur's Gate saga. As per the epilogue for the Rasaad romance, she has seven kids, and they all go on to do great things, so I created and spent a lot time fleshing out seven kids who are all wildly different combinations of their parents' traits. The first child ends up married to another character I made, who is the son of Solaufein (a major NPC from BG2).

Now if we're not counting canon-involved characters, those things are a bit more limited for me. I do tend to flesh out my characters' families, because of course family is so informative of who a person is, even if they don't have a family, they still came from somewhere. I have a lot of characters who are orphans, but I like having information about why they are orphaned and who their parents were.

13. Which story has the most lore?

Oh damn, this is very hard to gauge, because I love fleshing things out and for any given story, there's always a mountain of backstory, and I try very hard to balance between peppering in that information and sparing my readers from my Tolkien-level aspirations for lore. You may think I'm exaggerating, but I have notebooks filled with fictional languages I've created for my stories.

I think the most in-depth I've gotten with lore for a story was the novel I was working on in my first couple years of college, but I haven't touched it in many years, because I've changed so much as a person, and I feel like I need to rewrite everything I had. It was a Norse mythology inspired story about a dark elf mage who discovers a plot by the Asgardian Empire to destabilize the Elven Republic only recently formed between Ljosalfheim and Svartalfheim. The technology level was like late-19th Century, but powered by magic, so there were floating trains and carriages and shit, and I created the dark elf and light elf languages. I got intense about it. I even consulted my space-enthusiast brother on interesting planetary qualities for the different realms, because I conceived of them as different planets and interplanetary travel was done either through portals or the Asgardian Bifrost technology.

Okay, I'm gonna stop now before I infodump the whole thing.

20. What story are you the proudest of? Why?

At present? Probably The Nightmaven from my series of short stories about my DnD character, Vrae Zilivna. It's the only one that is almost entirely written from another character's perspective and treats her as the villain. It was a lot of fun to write. It's an incredibly messed up story about a couple of incredibly messed up people who have an incredibly messed up relationship, and it was a fun challenge to make that compelling, because the romances I usually write are generally about two very good people who are simply in shitty circumstances, but that is not so here. What happens when you're a resistance informant who accidentally fell in love with a fascist secret cop and your relationship ended in a predictably explosive way after he found out who you really are? Maybe you become a black widow assassin about it and do serial murders of your ex's colleagues while he runs around trying to catch you and having emotional turmoil about it.

Anyway, the part that really elevated this to Best Current Work for me was the embarrassingly large ego boost I got from coming up with the last line.

[svartalfhild]

your top 5 OCs

Anon asks me to rank my children? Oh, jail for Anon! Jail for 1000 years!

Jk jk I'll do it. This is based on who is occupying the most space in my heart right now.

Vivethys, my Dunmer Nightblade Vestige from ESO

Vrae Zilivna, my Drow Spirit Bard from DnD with my friends

Syrin A'Gorion, my Elf Ranger Bhaalspawn from Baldur's Gate 1 & 2

Xelakiir, my Drow Wild Sorcerer Tav from Baldur's Gate 3

Geneva "Noire" Harlan, a Toreador character I created to wrangle the coterie in the Vampire: The Masquerade chronicle I'm running

[svartalfhild]

Dreaming in the Dark and Waking in the Light

Rating: T

Genre: Gothic Romance, Tragedy

Words: 4,680

Summary: After ten years of playing a dangerous balancing act as a double agent between the Kargat and the resistance, the other shoe finally drops for Vrae Zilivna.

Content Warning: it gets really dark and violent, lads

A/N: This is a small story that details an important moment in the life of my new DnD character, a drow bard who is from Ravenloft but escapes to the Prime Material Plane for our campaign.  This story takes place during her life in Ravenloft.

Previous Stories: The Oracle and the Officer, (Un)bearable, Shattered, The Mirror is in the Eye of the Muse, Cold, For the Dead We Revel, For the Living We Mourn

~ ~ ~

“We’ve secured them at the safehouse.  The Kargat won’t find them, and they’ll be put on a ship to Liffe as soon as we’ve made arrangements to get them to the docks safely,” Shaena explained, and Vrae breathed a sigh of relief.  She was glad that the information she’d copied and passed on from Caspar’s journal hadn’t arrived in the hands of the resistance too late to save the Kargat’s latest target: a servant from the house of the local baroness who was wanted for their involvement in an assassination plot.

“Thank the gods.  I was afraid I’d be too late.  It’s become harder to get ahold of intelligence these past few weeks.”

“Why?  Is Caspar having a harder time taking his eyes off you or something?  If so, maybe you’ve been too effective at the seducing and you should ease up a little.”  Vrae gave her friend a sideways look at this comment and pulled her dressing gown a bit tighter around herself.

“It’s not that.  I think this assassination business has him being more cautious about what he carries on his person.”

“In that case, you’ll have to be equally careful.  Don’t reach for anything you aren’t sure you can hold.”

“Shaena, I appreciate your concern, but I’ve been doing this for ten years; I can handle myself.”  As much as Vrae appreciated Shaena trying to look out for her all the time, sometimes it felt a little patronizing, and in this particular moment, it seemed that wasn’t the only vibe the stalwart halfling was throwing at her.

“It’s precisely because you’ve been doing this for ten years that I’m concerned.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”  Vrae’s brow furrowed as she stared at Shaena, who gave a resigned sigh and took a moment to consider her words carefully before answering.

“You’ve been letting that man touch you for a long time now, longer than any of us thought even you’d be able to endure.  That’s been a bloody boon to the resistance, don’t get me wrong, but I can’t deny that it’s clearly changed you.  I don’t see the same fire in your eyes that I once did, and I can’t remember the last time you spoke a single word against Caspar.  You can see how that might make us worry that you’ve been compromised.”  Shaena wrung her fingers together as she spoke, obviously uncomfortable with crossing the line into being confrontational with Vrae.  For her part, Vrae felt panic begin to rise in her gut.  She’d been successfully lying about the nature of her relationship with Caspar for years, convincing everyone it was purely manipulative and transactional from her side, but if her friends were starting to ask questions, she was walking on very thin ice indeed.  Sure, Shaena had expressed concern before, but not like this, not speaking for the whole resistance cell.

“I’m not compromised.  I’m as dedicated to bringing down the Kargat as I ever was,” she replied carefully, knowing that the best way to lie was to tell a little truth first.  “I’ve simply made peace with my situation.  Yes, my mark is a decent lay and he’s generous with his money, but that just makes it easier to bear, nothing more.”

“So if Olvenriel told you to end the arrangement, you’d be able to do it, no hesitation?” Shaena asked pointedly, and it was like being slapped.  Vrae wasn’t prepared for this.  Her breath hitched in her throat as her mind reeled, trying to find something, anything to say that wouldn’t incriminate her.

“Is that what Olvenriel wants?”

“No, but would you be able to follow the order?”

“Yes.”  That was a complete and outright lie, and Vrae felt like she was choking on it, but she did her best to keep her voice calm and even.  Shaena eyed her for a long moment that felt like an eternity, scrutinizing her response for any hint of deception.  Her mouth fell open as her gaze dropped to Vrae’s collar.

“What is that?”  A jolt of terror shot through the young drow as she looked down to see that in the course of her gesturing while speaking, her dressing gown had slipped open enough for her silver locket to fall out.  Damn Shaena for showing up to her flat so early in the morning before she could properly dress to hide it.  She looked back up at her friend and visibly struggled to come up with a reply, but that in itself was enough.  Shaena reached out and opened the locket to see the engraved stars on one side and “for my beloved” in Elvish on the other.  Something like pity creased her expression, and Vrae felt ill.  “Shit, Vrae. What have you got yourself into?”

“He’s not what you think.”

“He’s Kargat!  They’re all liars and a murderers!  Surely you haven’t forgotten that!”  Shaena aggressively shut the locket and let it go.  In turn Vrae clutched it tightly over her own heart.

“I know what he is, but I know he can be more.  I’ve seen it.”

“Just because he loves you and treats you right don’t mean he’s a good man.”  Those words echoed the mantra Vrae had told herself for so long, trying to deny what she felt for Caspar, trying to convince herself of how wrong it was, but time and circumstance had shown how fruitless that had been.  Maybe it was still wrong, but at least she knew what she wanted now.

“No, but when he lies awake at night, wracked with guilt and wondering if he still serves justice, I know I’m looking at a good man led astray.  I have to help him find the right path.”

“You’re gambling with an awful lot of hope, luv, and that’s the weakest currency in the world,” Shaena advised, the anger in her small face giving way to sadness as she placed a gentle hand on Vrae’s arm.

“He’s worth it.”  The conviction in Vrae’s voice astonished Shaena, and she gaped up at her as if she’d just witnessed a carriage crash.

“By the gods, you really do love him,” she responded, aghast.  “When did this happen?”

“I…I don’t know,” Vrae answered after a short pause, tears welling up in her eyes as she started to realize the ramifications of her feelings and choices.  “Maybe it was the first time he laughed.  Maybe it was the first time he told me he loved me.  Maybe it was when he gave me this locket and promised himself to me.  Maybe it was a moment I don’t even remember.  I spent so long lying to myself that I’ll never be sure.”

“You know I have to tell Olvenriel.  You’ve been compromised, and that concerns us all.”

Vrae nodded solemnly.  As much as she would have liked to ask her friend to keep her secret, there was no point when the leader of their resistance cell possessed a ring that allowed her to see through lies.  Besides, Shaena was right, she had a moral duty to report this to the group.

When the halfling left, Vrae finally let her tears fall, but even alone in her flat, she bit back every sob that threatened to leave her.  She had had enough of her own weakness for one day, and the light of dawn had only just begun to peak through the curtains.  Spitefully, she drew the curtains further closed to shut out the light completely, even knowing that the light would help warm her flat.  She needed the comfort of total darkness right now.

~ ~ ~

In the next few days, Vrae heard nothing from Shaena or Olvenriel, and though she tried to put it out of her mind, it became the undercurrent of her waking hours.  She was often restless, and she caught her hands shaking when she was making tea for a customer one afternoon.  She was able to hide this from them, but when Caspar came to see her, he could tell that something was wrong.

 When they lay in bed together, bodies entwined under the comfort of her heaviest blanket, and Caspar was quietly telling her about a few things he wanted to draw, she found herself staring at him in a way that went beyond simple attentiveness.  Her gaze wandered over him, taking in every detail.  The green of his eyes.  The strong, angular shape of his thick eyebrows.  The sharp lines of his elven ears, his jaw, his cheeks, and his nose.  The way the stray mussed locks of his short black hair fell across his forehead.  The way the dark leather braid she’d made him hung around his neck.  The way his lips curved in a subtle smile as he spoke excitedly about his ideas.  He was beautiful and brilliant, and as she looked at him, she was screaming inside from the agony of wanting a life she could never have and knowing the world would take every chance to deny her even this simple comfort.  Tears welled up in her eyes, betraying her pain to him.  He caught it almost immediately and stopped mid-sentence, his smile fading into a look of concern.

“Vrae?”  He reached out and brushed her white hair back a little before resting a calming hand on her shoulder.  She said nothing and only continued to stare at him longingly while her tears began to spill from her eyes.  “Vrae, what troubles you?” he pressed and she curled up against him, burying her face in his chest and holding him tightly, as if he were a rock in a stormy sea.

“I love you so much,” she told him, her voice muffled against his sternum.  “I wish we could live a bonded life.”  At this, he relaxed and held her tightly in return.

“I feel the same,” he replied, kissing the top of her head and soothingly stroking her long hair.  She took several quiet moments to allow her tears to run their course before she pulled back just enough to meet his gaze.

“I have this silly little fantasy my mind wanders to occasionally where we get married in secret and run away together, taking a boat across the sea to some beautiful forgotten land where no one knows or cares who we are,” Vrae confessed, admittedly nervous that he would see it as a frivolous thought, but her fear was assuaged when he gave her a curious look and indulged her instead.

“And what do we do when we get there?”

“We build a little house by the sea where we are left in peace.  You spend your days sketching the world around us, and I write songs under the stars.  We read books to each other and dance on the beach.  We scream our love to the wind and the waves, and they roar back in thunderous blessing for all that we share.”  A pause followed these words as Caspar took them in, and a wistful smile graced his lips.

“That’s a beautiful dream,” he responded, entwining his fingers with hers.  “I wish I could make it real, but I’ll settle for dreaming it with you.  Thank you for telling me.”  He kissed the back of her hand, and she couldn’t help but give him a watery smile in return.

“You always know just what to say.”  At this, he wiped the last of the moisture from her eyes and offered her a look of gentle amusement.

“I should hope so.  A man of my position can’t afford to blunder.”

“And which position would that be?  Your nobility as the Arden heir?  Your station as Chamberlain of Vradlock?  Your rank in the Kargat?  Or your place in bed with me?” she questioned, playing along.

“Take your pick,” he told her with a small shrug, and a wicked grin spread across her face.

“I have a clear bias for any position you take with me.”  She drew her knee up the side of his thigh, delighting in the subtle way his eyes widened as she did so.  He quickly committed to the playful direction they’d taken, however, and he rolled with her onto her back, looming over her with the glint of a challenge in his eyes.

“Would this be acceptable, then?”

“Yes.”  Vrae reached up and traced her fingers along the edge of Caspar’s ear, half teasing, half soft and sincere.  He closed his eyes and leaned his head into the contact until her hand drew away.  In return, he kissed her slowly and carefully, and she let him be her entire world for a little while, forgetting about her worries and losing herself in his touch.

Later, as they lay together in contentment once more, Vrae quietly sang a song she’d written a few years ago that only Caspar knew was for him.  It spoke of a woman who fell in love with the voice of the sea, who would emerge from the water as a shadow each new moon, bringing her a lantern lit with one of the stars from the edge of the horizon, and when the lantern’s light faded at the end of the night, he would return to the waves, leaving her to pine at the shore for the next new moon, his distant whispers and the lap of the water against her ankles her only comfort.  As Vrae sang, she carded her fingers through Caspar’s dark hair and watched him drift into rest.

On any other night he came to visit, she would have gotten up the moment he was out to search his things for Kargat intel, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it this time.  She was tired of being a spy.  She was tired of lying to and betraying the man she’d come to love so deeply.  It was destroying her.  But she knew she had no choice.  This was as good as it would get for her, and she’d be a fool to ask for anything more.

Feeling a sudden need for guidance, she reached to her nightstand for her tarokka deck and pulled three cards.  The Charlatan.  The Traitor.  The Broken One.  Each one felt like a twisting knife in her gut, as if the spirits were not guiding her, but accusing her.  She was hit with the sensation of a dozen insistent hands pulling at her and her skin crawled with fear.  She quickly tossed the cards back onto her nightstand and held Caspar more tightly, closing her eyes and suppressing a sob.

~ ~ ~

A few days later, Vrae finally received a reaction to the news of her ill-advised entanglement from Olvenriel in the form of a letter.  It had been wedged in the sill of the window near her bed during the night for her to find in the morning.  It read, in elegant script:

You have done a great deal of good for our cause, and for that we are grateful, but you have been compromised by the affections of your target, and we now must call into question your ability to do the work.  Understand that even if you have not strayed far enough to do harm, we must be certain that no harm can be done in the future.  The continuation of our cause and the safety of the group must come first above all things.  As such, we must ask you to kill Caspar Arden by poison or any other discreet means you can devise.  Do this and we will consider the problem resolved.  If you refuse, you will have lost our trust completely, and we must take appropriate security measures.  Do not fail us.

- O

Panic consumed Vrae as she took in these words.  She felt as though the life she had carefully built was slipping between her fingers like water.  She didn’t know what to do.  How could she save both Caspar and herself?  Logic told her a sacrifice had to be made, but her heart refused, leading her to dress and throw on her coat as quickly as possible to head to the bakery a few streets over.  There, she found Shaena already hard at work before dawn as usual, shoving loaves of bread into the large oven.  The halfling was not surprised to see her and gave her a fresh look of pity as she observed her haggard and desperate appearance.

Their conversation was short, consisting primarily of Vrae demanding that Shaena arrange for her to get an audience with Olvenriel as soon as possible and Shaena promising to try.  Olvenriel was a noble, and that made her difficult to safely contact and see, but Shaena at least had an in through the kitchens of her estate.  Knowing this was all that could be achieved for now, Vrae returned home and prepared to open her shop for the day, where she would have to pretend that everything was fine.

Four days passed at an agonizing crawl as Vrae waited for news.  Worse still was the fact that the spirits refused to answer questions about herself and her predicament with anything other than the Traitor card.  How was she supposed to respond to such judgement from the dead?  Was what she was doing truly so wrong?

Olvenriel finally came to her unannounced at the end of the week, well before dawn and disguised as a peasant.  Vrae could only be certain it was her because she’d met her twice before, and the moment she pulled back her rough woolen cowl and straightened her posture, her commanding presence was undeniable.

“The halfling tells me you wish to discuss the terms of my letter,” she began, not taking the seat Vrae offered.

“I do.  I understand the alarm you and the others feel at what’s happened, but you cannot ask this of me.”  Vrae held up the letter emphatically, and Olvenriel’s crimson eyes hardened.

“Are you choosing to forfeit yourself, then?”

“No.”

“Then what is left?  Would you have another carry out the task for you?”

“No!”  Vrae cursed herself as she failed to hide her panic, and Olvenriel gave an impatient sigh.

“How are we to protect ourselves, then?  How are we to trust you while that male still holds influence over your heart?”

“I have been working very hard to bring him to our side, ma’am, and I have made progress.  To throw all of that away now would be a terrible waste, especially when I’m so close to achieving my goal,” Vrae reasoned, and Olvenriel raised a single, perfectly sculpted white eyebrow.

“I must admit, that’s not what I expected from you, but I can see the value in it.”  The noblewoman’s tone was more measured now, and Vrae felt she had gained at least a little respect, enough to embolden her to speak further.

“Give me time, ma’am, and we can both get what we want.  You can add a powerful tool to your arsenal and secure our cause.  I can save the man I love.”

“Very well.  If you’re so far along and so certain of your impending success, I give you a fortnight.  Don’t make me regret it,” Olvenriel declared, and before Vrae could say anything more, she watched her imperious guest pull up her cowl, turn on her heel, and leave.

The moment she was gone, Vrae fell to her knees, clutching her chest as she tried to fight another wave of panic.  Olvenriel was as terrifying and uncompromising as one would expect a follower of Lolth to be, but Vrae had managed to talk herself into a better position, and she could at least hold onto that, small victory though it was.  A stay of execution, however short, would give her a chance to get through this, but it was difficult to celebrate knowing what would happen if she failed.

When she’d calmed down enough to stand back up, she snapped her fingers to light a candle and set the letter on fire before dropping it in the cold hearth to be lost in the ashes.  She then went about her day once again, trying to pretend to the world that she was fine and nothing was amiss, but all the while wracking her brain for what she could possible say to Caspar to convince him to turn his back on the Kargat.  Everything she wanted was within sight, she just had to reach for it quickly and carefully enough.

Caspar arrived at her shop that evening in good spirits, despite being covered in a heavy dusting of snow.  As Vrae helped him brush off, he told her of how he’d actually gotten to just sit in his office in the mayor’s estate all day and do nothing but check ledgers and send missives for once.  He hadn’t been able to relax in several weeks, save for the handful of nights he’d spent with her, so the slow work day had been incredibly welcome.

“Why don’t you go right upstairs and warm yourself while I close everything up down here, and when I’m done, we can curl up by the fire and demolish the fresh tin of ginger biscuits I got my hands on a few days ago,” Vrae suggested after getting on her tip toes to kiss Caspar’s chilled cheek.  His severe features cracked into that surprisingly sweet smile of his, and he gave a small laugh.

“How do you still manage to get ahold of those so often?”

“It’s harder than it used be now that the Shroud has closed off the borders, but I know a bloke who knows a Mistwalker who goes to Falkovnia on the regular,” Vrae answered smuggly.

“Seems like a lot of effort for some biscuits.”

“It’s worth the pleasure of your smile.”  This earned her another laugh and a kiss.  “Alright, alright, go on.  Go get warm.  Some of us did have to work today.”  She shooed Caspar on up the stairs, leaving her with a few moments to lock up, count the day’s earnings, clean her tea set, and so on.  Just as she was about to put out the candles that lit her shop, however, she heard the door to the upstairs flat slam open, and she barely had time to look up and see Caspar’s tall, dark form racing towards her before she found herself pinned against the wall by his forearm.  The violet glow of an identifying spell faded from his intense glare as he held up a charred and shriveled fragment of paper with the words “kill Caspar” still legible on one side.  He knew everything.

Fear shot through her with such intensity that she wasn’t sure she would ever move again, and as she gaped up at him in abject terror, tears began to well up in his eyes and he slowly pressed on her harder and harder.

“Caspar, I would never.  I could never.  Surely you know that,” she tried to assure him, though the tremor in her voice was unmistakable.

“It seems I know nothing.  Ten years and I didn’t see it.  Ten years and all I was was the unwitting pawn of a dissident traitor,” Caspar seethed through his mounting tears.

“No!  I-It wasn’t like that!  I-”

“You’re a criminal in the service of those who would see Darkon destroyed.  I will not be made your fool again.”  He punctuated this statement by making the piece of paper burst into flame and fall as ashes from his fingers, all while he stared at Vrae, shaking with devastation and rage.  With his hand free, he threw her to the floor and drew his rapier to point it at her throat.  This finally spurred her to action, and she rolled out from under the blade to her feet, swiftly backing away.

“Caspar, please.  Don’t do this,” she begged, each word growing close to a sob.  “Caspar, I love you.”

“Liar!” he bellowed, his tears finally spilling down his cheeks as his heartbreak began to consume him.  He lunged at her, and she drew a dagger as if from thin air to parry the blow.

“If I am a liar, then what are you?  You lie and kill in the name of a king who cares nothing for his people and would keep us beneath his cruel heel.  If you think you serve justice, then you have made yourself the fool, not I,” Vrae told him, her sadness and bargaining giving way to bitterness and anger.  He lunged again and she spun to the side.  He swiped at her and she ducked.  He had trained her in swordplay, and she knew all of his moves, but still they danced, driven by every raw emotion ripping at their hearts.

Though Vrae knew Caspar’s tactics, he was faster, stronger, and more experienced, and she had only a dagger to defend herself.  It was easy for him to back her into a corner and push aside her blade to grab her by the throat.  Before he could choke her, however, she let out a haunting scream, layered with the voices of the dead, and a wave of rippling pale green energy blasted out from her, throwing Caspar backwards, along with every loose object in the shop.  Dozens of glass jars shattered on the floor, and the table and chairs splintered against the wall in a great cacophony of destruction.

Vrae’s boots crunched on broken glass as she leapt for Caspar’s fallen sword, but a spectral hand snatched it up before she could reach it and delivered it to him.  He rolled to his feet and muttered a few arcane words, sending three projectiles of energy from his hand to crash into her like the hardest punches she’d ever felt in her life.  She doubled over and looked back up at Caspar with barely restrained anguish in her eyes as she clutched her ribs.

“Stop!” she cried in a last ditch effort to save them both.  The word reverberated throughout the room as her eyes flashed green, and Caspar staggered, dropping his rapier.  He looked dazed for a moment, but then he gave a few hard blinks and wrath returned to his face, lips trembling with rage.  He charged at her and grabbed her by the neck again, pushing her once more into the wall.

“I loved you,” he said, his voice wavering between heartbreak and cold resentment.  There was nothing she could say in return as he closed his fingers around her throat.  She could only gape at him, fresh tears streaming down her face.  Realizing that he was truly lost to her, she pulled a knife from the shaft of her boot and plunged it into his side.  He cried out in pain, a sound and sight that pierced her soul with the knowledge that she was hurting the person she loved, but it was necessary.  He let go of her, stumbling back and growling in further agony as he pulled the blade out and tossed it to the floor.  She used the opportunity to summon the Illusionist card into her hand, and with a grand sweeping gesture, she went invisible.

When Caspar looked up, she was gone, and he stopped to listen for the crunch of glass under her feet.  She tried to tiptoe around the shards, but just as she neared the door, she caught the edge of one, and his gaze snapped towards her.  Knowing she was made, she dashed for the exit.  With his wound, he was too slow to grab her, and she managed to slip out into the night, dashing down the snowy street and ducking into an alley to drop her invisibility in favour of willing herself into the air, thus ending the trail of footprints she had left behind.

As she made her way through the quiet darkness, the cold biting into her bones, it slowly began to sink in that her life had finally come crashing down around her.  Everything she had built, everything she had loved, all gone in a matter of moments, leaving her with nothing but the clothes on her back and the weight of her sins in her heart.

[svartalfhild]

For the Dead We Revel, For the Living We Mourn

Rating: T

Genre: Gothic Romance

Words: 2,990

Summary: There is no festival in Darkon more important than the Festival of the Dead, and that means it's a busy working day for a spirit bard like Vrae, but this year, the most memorable moments are away from the public eye.

A/N: This is a small story that details an important moment in the life of my new DnD character, a drow bard who is from Ravenloft but escapes to the Prime Material Plane for our campaign. This story takes place during her life in Ravenloft.

Previous Stories: The Oracle and the Officer, (Un)bearable, Shattered, The Mirror is in the Eye of the Muse, Cold

~ ~ ~

The Festival of the Dead was an important holiday for Vrae, not just because of her connection to the spirit world, but also because it was the most profitable day of the year for her.  She was one of the handful of bards the city of Vradlock employed for the festivities in the main square, and that was a very big deal for her.  She pulled out all the stops for her part in the celebration, wearing elaborate costumes and spending weeks beforehand working on the magic she would need to amaze her audience with special effects.  There was much effort involved, but it was well worth it.

This year, the festival was particularly lively as the harvest had yielded an uncommon abundance of almost everything, and Vrae could feel the excitement from the spirits as well, for the coming night would be their time to celebrate and there would be a new moon, granting them greater darkness in which to revel.  As she put on her costume, she heard children running down the street, and she glanced between her curtains to see two little drow and their green dragonborn friend go tearing by with simple skull masks on their faces.  She couldn’t help but smile wistfully at the sight, remembering what the holiday had been like for her when she was small.

Before she had become an orphan, she’d been the daughter of a dockhand and a weaver, and while they hadn’t had much money to throw around, her parents had always tried to make this day as enjoyable for her as possible.  They made her the very best costumes that could be created with just leather and wool, gave her coppers for sweets, and let her run amok.  On top of that, no one had cared that she was a strange child during the Festival of the Dead; it was the one time when people wouldn’t shy away from her, and that had made this holiday the source of some of the most positive memories of her life.  Those memories were tinged with a bittersweet longing for simpler times and the love of her parents.  Looking down into the street, she hoped those children had parents who gave them all the love and care she had been robbed of since the age of 10.

Taking a deep breath, Vrae put the final touches on her outfit and made her way out to the city square.  This year, she was dressed as a banshee, sporting a tattered white gown and intense makeup that gave her an unnaturally gaunt look.  It was perfect for the kinds of eerie performances she was known for, but it did very little to shield her from the chilly autumn air, and she found herself rubbing her arms for warmth.  She wove through a building crowd of people wearing similar costumes of fiends or undead and headed for the stage area near the city hall.  It seemed that Baroness Ilkaranae Dremneth and her son the mayor had only just arrived for the opening ceremony, which meant Vrae still had a little time to prepare.

“There you are!  Come, come, come!” Vrae’s friend Qilston exclaimed when she appeared backstage.  He was the cellist of the chamber orchestra often employed at events like this, and he was perhaps the most organized and responsible member of the entire group.  Without him, she was quite sure his comrades would rarely be on the same page with her about performance times and lineups and such.

“I’m glad everyone got my note about the theme,” Vrae remarked as she surveyed the musicians’ gold inlaid skull masks and embroidered coats.  Qilston smiled.

“Great choice.  Only wish we could play with gloves.  It’s bloody cold.”

“You don’t have to tell me that.”  Vrae gestured to her gauzy white gown, and he conceded with a rueful nod.

“Oh, how we suffer for our art.”

“And for our coin.”  They both laughed sardonically and went about the business of setting everything up for their performance, herding the others into getting their shit together, especially the rather empty-headed drummer, who nearly put Qilston’s eye out while fooling around with his stick.

When they were cued to go on stage, Vrae triggered the pale green smoke effect she’d planned for their entrance and brought the group out with all the mystery and gravitas she’d hoped.  The crowd gasped and the music began, ethereal lights pulsing within the smoke to the dark waltz beat.  She emerged from the smoke, floating a couple feet above the stage with the tatters of her dress billowing about with a magical wind.  Her voiced keened out across the square, sending shivers down the spines of her audience.  They clung to each verse that fell from her lips, enthralled by this haunting spectacle and the song which spoke of a powerful entity taking the listener’s fear away to the lands beyond the Veil.  It was equal parts a tale of corruption and absolution, meant to be read one way or the other according to the listener’s temperament.

Vrae played the part well with the power she carried in her voice, resonating with the ambient spirits of Vradlock and putting an almost electric feeling in the air.  It was the best performance she had given in years, and the applause of the crowd when the song ended was proof enough of that.  She gave a grand bow and floated back into the smoke, disappearing to further applause.

Once she was backstage, she allowed herself to relax and smile a little at her hard earned success.  The small theatre troupe that was getting ready to present a short farcical play had a mixed reaction to her presence, some eyeing her with competitive disdain and others giving her “well done” gestures.  Either way, she acknowledged them before slipping off across the square towards her fortunetelling tent.

“That was spectacular.  And you look lovely in white,” she heard a familiar deep voice murmur in her ear as she walked.  She smiled to herself again and glanced about for any sign of the speaker, but she didn’t spot him.  He was around here somewhere, obscured by the crowd.

“Thank you,” she replied affectionately.  “And what kind of costume have you brought out this year?”

“You’ll find out later.”  Vrae so enjoyed when her beloved teased her like this that the suspense didn’t bother her in the least, and she got to work in her tent in an uncommonly good mood.

When customers started filtering in, Vrae’s tarokka deck reflected her positive feelings, giving the majority of those who visited her a gentle reading.  The spirits liked giving good news to respectful festival goers on this holiday, but this year, there was a greater softness in their energy; it was delightful.  And of course nothing made her happier than seeing the wide-eyed looks of nervousness and awe on the faces of children transform into joy when they learned of their futures.

“Thank you, Lady Wispcaller!  I’ll take good care of the puppy when I get it, I promise!” a human girl declared with a huge grin after her reading.  As she turned to leave and opened the tent flap, however, she was immediately confronted by a very tall and imposing figure, clad all in billowing black with a short horned skull mask covering the upper half of his face.  She gasped and took a step back, clutching her little wooden scythe prop to her chest.

“Worry not, my dear.  I know him.  He would never harm you,” Vrae soothed after surveying the figure.  She’d recognize those green eyes and those thin lips anywhere.

“My apologies for startling you, young miss,” he said, bowing to the child respectfully and producing a wrapped hand pie from within his cloak to offer to her.  She lit up immediately and carefully took the pie.

“Still warm,” she marveled.  “Thank you!”  She gave him a respectful bow of her own and hurried off, letting him enter the tent to be alone with Vrae.

“Well done, Caspar,” Vrae told him with a smirk.  “And an excellent costume.  Who knew a shadow fiend could be so dashing?”

“That was unfortunately not the first child I’ve frightened today.  But thank you.  I have a pie for you as well.”  As promised, Caspar produced a second wrapped treat from within his cloak and handed it to her, her chilled fingers quite pleased at its warmth.  The candles in the tent had thankfully provided her with enough heat to keep her from shivering out here in the autumn air, especially with the tent blocking the wind, but the small warmth of a hand pie was still enough to be a great comfort.

“I’d say that’s worth a reading.  Come sit,” Vrae offered fondly, nodding to the stool before her and shuffling her deck.  Caspar took a seat and waited patiently.  She pulled three cards and set them out neatly on the small table between them.  The Donjon.  The Diviner.  The Artifact.  “Interesting.  In the face of a confining situation, you are seeking truth and honesty, and you will achieve that with the help of an object.”

“Yes, that does feel appropriate,” Caspar responded, the corners of his lips curving up a little.

“Anything I can know about?”

“I’ll tell you later after the festival.  For now, I just wanted to give you that pie and let you know that the Baroness was very pleased with your performance.”  With this, he got up to leave and Vrae rose to quickly kiss his cheek just below the edge of his mask.

“I appreciate it,” she whispered, and he gave her a loving look before departing.

~ ~ ~ 

As the sun began to set, the festival wound down, and Vrae closed down her tent so that she’d have time to take advantage of the lingering glow of daylight.  Caspar caught up with her just as she was heading off, not towards her shop, but towards the slums, where she had grown up.  Most people took time during the Festival of the Dead to visit the graveyard and pay their respects to their ancestors and departed loved ones, but her parents had no graves, so she had to improvise.

“Where are we going?” Caspar asked as he followed her across the bridge to the south side of the city.  In all their years of being together, this was the first time he had been present for her little holiday ritual.  Usually, she would ask him to wait for her at her shop, but this year, she’d finally gotten the courage to reveal this part of her past to him.

“My childhood home,” she answered, and while she could tell from the tension in his shoulders that he wanted to ask more questions, he was patient and waited for her to speak her piece.

When they came to a small, dilapidated wooden house, Vrae stopped and folded her hands together as she gazed mournfully at the rickety structure.  Another family lived here now, so she couldn’t go inside, but it was the closest thing she had to a resting place for her mother and father.

“We’re here to pay respects to my parents,” she informed Caspar, whose eyes widened slightly.

“I’m so sorry.”  There was sympathy, but also confusion in his voice, as she had yet to explain why they were here and not at the graveyard.

“Caspar, I have to tell you something about my past.  You won’t like it, but…I need you to know.”  At this, he reached out and put a reassuring hand on her arm, nodding for her to continue.  It was hard to tell through his mask, but she expected his brow was furrowed in concern.  Taking a deep breath, she went on, switching their conversation to magical whispers so there was no chance of being overheard.  “When I was small, my parents were arrested by the Kargat.  Agents stormed into our house in the night, and I watched from my hiding place as they brutalized, tied up, and took away my parents.  I never saw them again, but I know in my heart that they’re dead, and if I hadn’t hid myself, I would be too.”

A look of inner conflict came cross Caspar’s face as Vrae explained this, as if he were asking himself whether his organization would have really murdered a child.  He closed his eyes and swallowed, indicating that he had accepted the ugly truth.  He was Kargat.  He knew the things his colleagues were capable of.

“Unfortunately, I’ve seen that kind of behaviour before.  There are agents who take the extrajudicial power King Azalin grants us and use it dishonorably.”

“You’re the only Kargat agent I’ve met who hasn’t abused or taken something from me.”  This statement seemed to hit Caspar even more profoundly than Vrae’s last.  He stared at her, contemplating what awful things the other members of his cell might have done to her that she would have hidden it from him all these years.  Thankfully, he didn’t pry for details.

“If you have every reason to hate the Kargat, why do you work with us?”  The question came out softly, and Vrae could see when he opened his eyes that he was struggling to reconcile his idealistic notion of what a Kargat agent should be with the reality of their actions.

“Do you honestly think Lord Berkhamer would have taken no for an answer when he asked me to be an informant?” she challenged, again confronting him with a truth he did not wish to face.  After a brief pause, he shook his head.  “We live in an unforgiving world, Caspar.  I do the work to stay alive and put food on my table.  The only mercy I’ve been given is you.”  Vrae wanted to reach up and touch his face, but even an empty street at dusk was too public a place for such a gesture, so she put that tenderness in her pale violet gaze instead, hoping he would understand.

“I will do everything in my power to protect you,” he vowed, meeting her eyes and squeezing her arm.  No doubt he was holding back a more romantic gesture as well, if the intensity of his expression was anything to go by.  “You’re shivering,” he noted, speaking normally this time instead of through magic, and she realized it had grown too cold for her to conceal her discomfort any longer.  He swiftly removed his cloak and wrapped it around her before she could even think to politely reject it, and she relished its warmth.  “Let’s get you home before either the chill or the undead can claim you.”  Vrae gave a somewhat sheepish nod at this and allowed Caspar to take her to her shop after stealing one last glance at the old house.

Once they were up in her flat, safe from the prying eyes of the world, they could finally relax.  She got the hearth going and they began to help each other out of their costumes.  The quiet intimacy of it was calming and almost meditative for both of them, especially after such an exciting day.  Halfway down the hooks of Vrae’s corset, however, Caspar paused, his eyes seemingly fixed on her clavicle, his expression loving but tinged with anxiety and possibly even sadness.  He brushed his fingers over her collarbone, but said nothing until she stirred him from his thoughts.

“What is it?”

“I want to give you something.  I’ve been meaning to for a while, but I just…couldn’t find the right moment.”  Vrae raised an eyebrow at this.  He wasn’t usually shy about gifts.  What made this any different?  She watched him retrieve something from the pile of coats and such she’d already taken off him, and he nervously presented his closed hand to her, though he didn’t reveal the gift yet.  Instead, he took a deep breath and spoke again.  “I wish I could give you a silver chain, but a nobleman and a peasant can never marry, so I can only offer you the next best thing.”  He opened his fingers, allowing her to see the tiny silver locket on a dark leather cord nestled in his palm.  Wide-eyed and speechless, Vrae slowly took the locket from him and opened it.  Engraved on one side of the inside were many stars, like a night sky.  On the other side were the Elvish words “tho salen shaelith”, meaning “for my beloved”, and suddenly she remembered all those years ago when Caspar had said he would bring her the stars if he could, just to see her smile.  “This is my promise of devotion to you and my sorrow for not being able to give you more,” he told her.  Tears welled up in her eyes and she covered her mouth, overwhelmed by such a painfully romantic gesture.

“Oh, Caspar,” she murmured when she pulled her hand away, placing it instead over his heart.  “This is…this is perfect.  Could you help me…?”  She held the ends of the cord up around her neck, and he obliged, shifting around behind her to tie the knot.  When he was done, she turned to him and let him admire the way the locket hung.  “I’ll have to make something for you to have as well, my own little promise and sorrow for you to bear.  But for now, you’ll have to settle for all the affection I can give you.”  With a smile, she pulled Caspar down into a deep kiss and pressed herself up against him.

“That’s more than enough for me,” he breathed when they parted, echoing her smile.  She draped her arms around his neck and leaned her forehead against his, remaining there for several moments of quiet, blissful peace.

“Caspar?” she whispered after a while.

“Yes?”

“I love you.”  And for the first time, Vrae knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she meant it.

[svartalfhild]

The Nightmaven

Rating: M, to be safe

Genre: Fantasy Noir, Gothic Horror, Tragedy

Words: 2,812

Summary: The Nightmaven has killed again, and an agent of the Kargat, the secret police of Darkon, has come to investigate. Whether his personal connection to the case is a boon or a hindrance remains to be seen.

Content Warnings: death, violence, fascism, emotional manipulation, description of a murder crime scene (not overly graphic)

A/N: This is a small story that details an important moment in the life of my new DnD character, a drow bard who is from Ravenloft but escapes to the Prime Material Plane for our campaign.  This story takes place during her life in Ravenloft and is from the perspective of another character.

Previous Stories: The Oracle and the Officer, (Un)bearable, Shattered, The Mirror is in the Eye of the Muse, Cold, For the Dead We Revel, For the Living We Mourn, Dreaming in the Dark and Waking in the Light

~ ~ ~

Rain poured over the cobblestone streets of Martira Bay in cold sheets as a carriage stopped outside the gate of one of the more affluent merchant homes in the city.  A very tall, lithe figure stepped out, his head obscured by the large hood of a long black cloak.  As he approached the door, the two men standing on the front stoop regarded him in suspicion.  They wore dark blue woolen greatcoats with broad black cuffs and collars, and there were thin brass chains adorning their shoulders in place of epaulets, marking them as constables.  They looked ready to bar his entry, but he made a sign with his hand that resembled an eye, and they both straightened in alarm, letting him pass without incident.

It was dark inside the house, save for a candlestick held by one of a cluster of shaken servants being questioned by another constable, but this was no trouble to the cloaked man, and he proceeded confidently up the stairs, following the sounds of movement and voices.  He came to the open doorway of a stately master bedroom, where he found two more constables examining what was, simply put, a gruesome murder scene.

A pale human man of middle age for his species lay sprawled on the large bed.  He was on his back, naked, with a pool of blood seeping out from under him into the sheets.  His lips were stained black, and there were similarly coloured markings on his neck and collarbones.  His expression was grotesquely frozen in a look of shock.  It was clear that he had been killed in flagrante, and the odors in the air matched that assertion.

One of the constables, who had an extra set of brass chains on his shoulders, turned his attention to the cloaked man entering the room.

“You must be the one I was told to expect,” he said, clearly trying to speak with authority, but failing to completely hide the note of nervousness in his voice.  The figure finally pulled back his hood to reveal the long face of a moon elf with severe features and an unsettling coldness in his green eyes.  He had distinctively thick eyebrows, particularly for an elf, and his short black hair was slicked back, enhancing the effect of his stoney, intimidating demeanor.

“I am,” he replied curtly, his voice deep and slightly raspy.  His gaze flicked over to the other constable, who was searching under the bed for something.  “Don’t bother looking for the murder weapon.  You won’t find it.”  At these words, the constable got up, flushed with embarrassment, and stood stiffly at attention.

“So it’s true, then?  The Nightmaven has come to Martira Bay?” the higher ranking constable asked.

“That’s what I’m here to determine, Captain.  Don’t get in my way.”  This simple threat was enough to chase away whatever remained of the captain’s sense of authority, and he quickly moved to the side, as did the junior officer.  Satisfied with their obedience, the elf proceeded further into the room and went over to the bed to examine the corpse.

The victim had four stab wounds in his back, likely from a small dagger, as well as nail marks down his shoulderblades, indicating that his killer had probably been underneath him when she’d struck.  The elf muttered a few words as he made an arcane gesture, and his eyes glowed violet, allowing him to confirm that there was a magical silencing poison in the black lip marks on the victim’s body.  As the light faded from his eyes, he spotted the corner of something green poking out between the pillows.  He carefully pulled at it and found that it was a length of green hair ribbon.  His eyes widened slightly, and he turned away from the constables as he gazed at it intently.  He held the ribbon to his nose and breathed in a faint but familiar herbal scent, flooding his mind with unexpected sense memories.  The feeling of her soft, dark gray skin pressed against him.  The sight of her long white hair splayed out beneath her.  The musical sound of her laughter.  The taste of her lips on his.

He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to shake the memories from his mind, but when he turned back to look at the murder victim again, he felt a morbid pang of jealousy at the evidence that she had been with another man.  The moment he realized what was happening, he felt disgusted with himself.  The insanity of his being jealous of a corpse aside, she was a murderess and a traitor to her country, and she deserved to be executed for her many crimes.  Even so, part of him wondered if he’d ever truly be able to stop pining for her.

“Caspar Arden, you must master yourself if you ever hope to achieve justice,” a gravelly voice said in his ear, and with a blink, he was not longer in the merchant’s house.  Instead, he was standing in what appeared to be a throne room decorated with dark blue and black banners bearing a flaming golden eye, echoing the flag of Darkon.  A few paces from him, clad in sumptuous red robes and a gilded iron crown, was an old man whose hawkish profile would be recognized by any Darkonian from their coinage.  This could be none other than Azalin Rex.

“My king!” Caspar gasped, immediately falling to one knee and bowing his head.

“Your fealty does you credit, boy, but I am beginning to question the wisdom of rewarding you for it.  It has been four years, and you still have not caught your quarry.”

“Some prey requires patience, your majesty,” Caspar reasoned, earning him an amused huff from Azalin.

“Perhaps, but this is the latest in four of your fellow Kargat officers she’s killed, and she will only continue her path of destruction while you wait for your moment.”

“Perhaps if I were to be granted the full benefits of my promotion-”

“You will be gifted lycanthropy when you prove you can achieve results without it.  If you wish to become Lord Berkhamer’s successor, it is not his power you must possess, but his competence.”  The king’s words were harsh and exacting, but Caspar accepted them as wisdom.

“Of course, my king.  What must I do to rid myself of weakness?”

“Remember always that Vrae Zilivna and those she works with are a threat to the peace and stability of Darkon.  While she is free, loyal Darkonians will be harmed.  Let your anger and your hatred for her drown every impulse to show mercy, sympathy, or compassion.  Do not hesitate.  Do not back down.  Prove that you are willing to do whatever it takes to protect your country,” Azalin instructed, and Caspar crossed his forearm over his chest in salute.

“Your will is my command.”

“Then see that you do not disobey me,” were the last words he heard from the king before he blinked, and he was once again standing in the master bedroom of the merchant’s house, as if not a moment had passed.

After taking a few seconds to recover from his vision of Azalin Rex, he pocketed the green ribbon and turned back to the two constables and the corpse.

“Did anyone witness the victim enter the house with an unfamiliar woman?” he inquired, and the captain straightened.

“Yes, sir.  A number of the servants all saw her.  They say a young lady came home with him from a party he’d been attending in the evening.  They described her as-”

“Her appearance is irrelevant,” Caspar interrupted, holding up a halting hand.  “The Nightmaven can make herself look like anyone, and it is likely she changed her appearance the moment she left.”  The constables exchanged nervous looks at this.  “I suggest you be vigilant for unusual behaviour, anything that might indicate that a person is not who they appear to be.”

“Yes, sir.”  The captain crossed his arm over his chest in salute, and Caspar gave him a small nod before turning to examine the room further and consider his next move.  It was incredibly bold of Vrae to come to Martira Bay, the seat of the Kargat’s power, but if her goal was to slay Kargat officers, then she had a large selection of potential targets here.  She had been working her way across the country, disrupting their operations and assassinating officers, and now her path of destruction reached from coast to coast.  He hated himself for failing to end her back home in Vradlock before this could get so out of hand.  He hated himself for a lot of things concerning her.

As he looked down at her latest victim, he recalled the way he’d felt seeing the others, especially that first one.  He recalled the pain and betrayal that had shot through his heart like a knife, twisting and twisting at the knowledge that he had failed his comrades, that she was his responsibility, and that she was taunting him with her seduction tactics.

He still vividly remembered how things had once been between them, before he’d learned who she truly was.  He had loved her more than life itself, and he would have done anything for her.  He would have asked her to be his wife, if circumstances had allowed.  There were ten years of happy memories between them, now tainted and rotting in his heart with the revelation that she had been playing him from the beginning, using him to aid political dissidents and terrorists.  He didn’t remember much of what had happened in the year following his discovery of her betrayal.  All his mind could conjure of that time was flashes of violent rage, confused pining, and the image of Vrae’s dissident leader, Olvenriel Noss’mirin, being publicly hanged.  It was a painful period of his life he had little desire to recall further.

In the years since, his anger had hardened into cold rage, but until now, his desire for Vrae had continued to confuse him.  King Azalin had made everything clear and simple to him now.  He would be the man Darkon needed him to be.  No more distractions.  Only the pursuit of justice by whatever means necessary.

“Constable?”  Caspar was shaken from his thoughts by the sound of the captain addressing his subordinate in a scrutinizing tone.  He looked up to see him staring intently at the junior officer, who was standing close by, writing something in a small notebook.

“Yes, sir?” the young man responded, looking confused.

“Since when are you left-handed?”  At this, the youthful sincerity in his face gave way to an uncharacteristically sly grin.

“Well spotted, Captain,” a familiar feminine voice answered as the form of the constable faded to reveal a short, sharp-faced drow woman with lavender eyes and long, stark white hair arranged into a twisted bun.  Tossing the pencil and notebook aside, she let out a terrible scream layered with haunting voices, and a ripple of pale green energy burst out of her in all directions, throwing the captain against the wall.  Caspar anticipated her and braced himself, remaining on his feet.

“Zilivna!” he spat, drawing his rapier to lunge at her.  He pierced her side, and her scream died in a cry of pain.  Pulling herself from the blade, she rolled away from him towards the nearby window.  When she came back to her feet, she drew a dagger and threw it at him.  It imbedded itself in his shoulder, and he gritted his teeth, but didn’t pause to pull it out.  Instead, he made an arcane gesture and produced three bolts of violet energy from his hand, which hit Vrae like punches to her torso and nearly brought her to her knees.  She staggered on her feet, but glared at Caspar all the while.

“See you in Hell, Kargat scum!” she hissed before turning and leaping through the window in a shower of glass.

“Sir!” the captain called out in alarm from his position on the floor, pointing at the spot where Vrae had tossed the notebook.  In its place was a polished red stone with an arcane sigil carved into it that was glowing brighter and brighter.  Caspar’s lip curled, and he launched himself out the window as the stone exploded and engulfed the room in flames.  He skidded down the roof incline below and dropped into a flowerbed.  With a grunt of pain, he pulled the knife out of his shoulder and looked around for signs of his quarry, as she was nowhere to be seen.  She couldn’t have gotten far, badly injured as she was.  The heavy rain made it difficult, but once he pulled his hood back up to shield his eyes, he was able to make out shapes in the mud.

Vrae had fallen here, but someone with much smaller feet had helped her up, a child or a halfling perhaps, and they had gone off towards the back of the house.  The tracks stopped halfway around the corner, likely as Vrae realized she needed to erase them.  Caspar paused for a moment to carefully consider what direction they may have gone.  There was a stone wall that they might have climbed over to the grounds of the next property, but there were also stables at the back of this house, and which they had chosen was a question of what they were willing to risk.  Considering how badly wounded Vrae was, he placed his bet on her trying to fake him out again by staying close.

Quickly and quietly, Caspar snuck towards the stables and listened intently for any signs of movement or sounds of distress from the horses.  The distant din of yelling constables and scared civilians didn’t help, but he kept vigilant as he crept from stall to stall, determined to root out Vrae and her accomplice.  It was not sound that eventually betrayed them, however, but rather a few drops of blood on a patch of hay.

“I know you’re here.  It’s pointless to hide,” he warned.  There was no response, and he continued his methodical search until a halfling woman leapt out at him from a pile of hay, brandishing a knife.  She slashed him across the thigh, and he grabbed her wrist, twisting her arm out of the way to put the edge of his sword to her throat.  “Move and you die.”  She went still, and he was finally able to get a good look at her.  He could recognize her now as Shaena Pencroft, Vrae’s primary accomplice and one of the few remaining members of the Vradlock terrorist cell.  “Where is she?” he demanded.

“Gone.  You’ll never catch her now.”

“An obvious lie.  I saw her blood on the hay.”

“Are you sure it was hers?”  Shaena raised her left hand to show a cut on her finger, smirking at him, and his icy glare became even more intense.  “You’re a real fucking idiot, mate.”

“I beg to differ.”  Caspar pressed his blade harder against the halfling’s throat, drawing blood, but she only gave a bitter laugh.

“Says a man who mindlessly serves a despot.  You’re pathetic.  I’ll never understand why Vrae loved you, but she did.  So much so that she was willing to stake her life on the belief that she could save you from yourself.  What a bloody waste.  She deserved better.”

“More pointless lies,” he replied sharply.  Before she could respond, he slit her throat in a quick and vicious motion and let her body drop to the ground in a bloody heap.  “Now die pointlessly.”  With this, he turned on his heel and went back out into the rain to pursue Vrae over the stone wall.

Up in the hay loft above the stables, Vrae observed, invisible and unmoving, through a gap in the boards.  Shaena had made her promise to stay hidden and not reveal herself, no matter what happened, so she had watched in wide-eyed horror has the man she had once loved slaughtered her best friend without hesitation or remorse.  Even as her broken leg and side wound screamed in agony, she stayed silent and raged against her helplessness.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered tearfully to Shaena once Caspar had gone.  “This is all my fault.”  She close her eyes and listened to the pouring rain as she struggled against the overwhelming tide of emotions washing over her.

The Caspar she knew and loved was truly dead.  He would have foregone pursuing her to protect the other people in that house.  He would have offered Shaena mercy.  This Caspar had become completely cold and cruel, and she felt nothing but bitterness and hatred for him now.  If he wished to trade atrocities, then so be it.  She would smother him in the ashes of the scorched earth he left behind.

[svartalfhild]

Vrae Zilivna, Drow Spirit Bard

Once a fortune teller and resistance spy from Vradlock, Darkon, Vrae has escaped from Ravenloft after fleeing from the Kargat and now finds herself in the Prime Material Plane, trying to learn what it means to live in a world where crushing despair is not a constant weight on one's shoulders.

[svartalfhild]

Vespera Dignitatis

Rating: M, to be safe

Genre: Gothic Horror, Gothic Romance, Tragedy

Words: 6,843

Summary: The life of a political dissident in Darkon is a dark and twisted path, and Vrae has reached the final bend in hers to discover that, even as she has given everything to this fight, she still has a few things left to lose.

Content Warnings: fascism, violence, torture, blood, brief gore, body horror, environmental disaster

A/N: This is a small story that details an important moment in the life of my new DnD character, a drow bard who is from Ravenloft but escapes to the Prime Material Plane for our campaign.  This story takes place during her life in Ravenloft.

Previous Stories: The Oracle and the Officer, (Un)bearable, Shattered, The Mirror is in the Eye of the Muse, Cold, For the Dead We Revel, For the Living We Mourn, Dreaming in the Dark and Waking in the Light, The Nightmaven

~ ~ ~

Vrae was losing the war she’d been fighting for nearly ten years now, twenty, if you counted her years pretending to serve her enemy.  The Kargat had taken everything from her, starting with her parents when she was small, and then they had gradually taken everything else.  The man she loved.  Her home.  Her friends.  Her innocence.  Her integrity.  Any day now, they’d probably take her sanity too.  But still she fought.  She spent every day on the run, going from place to place, making her mark on every corner of Darkon in a desperate attempt to dismantle the very secret police who hounded her.

Aside from strength of will, there were two things that had kept her going and out of the clutches of the Kargat for so long.  The first was the common folk with more sympathy for a troublemaking bard than for brutal agents of the king.  The second was her tarokka deck, which warned her of coming danger.  The trouble with the latter was that it was up to her to interpret the message the spirits were trying to give her, and sometimes she didn’t get it quite right.  This is what had led her to her current situation, running for her life after failing to realize the tavern she’d been staying at was populated by government sympathizers.  Thankfully, she had the gift of invisibility and Drow darkvision, and she could easily lose her pursuers, especially once she’d made it to the outskirts of town and utterly disappeared into the farm fields beyond.  The trouble was that escaping the authorities didn’t make her any safer.

The Kingdom of Darkon, like many of the lands couched in the Mist, was plagued at night by roaming undead.  It was unwise to remain out of doors when it was dark, and as such, Vrae could not simply hide amongst the golden sea of wheat.  She needed to seek shelter, lest she wake to find a ghoul gnawing at her leg.  Exhaustion already weighed at her, but running so far and so long like this made it worse and worse, so she was forced to settle for a barn that was nearer to the village than she would have liked.  It was rather derelict and large enough to house several animals, but when she snuck inside, she found that there were only a pair of cows, who didn’t seem to register her presence.  It was fairly easy for her to creep over behind a large pile of hay and nestle herself within it, wrapped in her cloak for warmth.  She covered herself a little in straw to keep hidden, and the tired ache in her limbs carried her off to sleep before she could even attempt to settle into a proper trance.

~ ~ ~

Candlelight flickered at the edges of Vrae’s vision as she sat on her bed, plucking idly at her lyre while her partner carefully brushed her long white hair.  He spoke to her quietly in his native Elvish tongue, his tone gentle and comforting.  She didn’t know what he was saying, only that it was meant to soothe her, and she smiled.  When he was done, she set aside her instrument and turned to look at him.  She found him lying on his back, jaw slack and eyes wide with his chest savagely clawed open and his heart missing.  She screamed and scrambled away, only to discover that the floor was littered with the similarly mutilated bodies of her friends.  Pale green light filled their skulls, and they shambled to life around her, reaching for her, moaning her name.

“No!  NO!” she cried in horror, backing herself into the wall and then pushing herself to her feet as quickly as she could.  She hurried to the door of her flat and flung it open before racing down the stairs to her shop and making for the exit.  Just as her fingers were about to close around the doorknob, however, she was halted by the feeling of a hand grabbing her arm.  Her assailant spun her around, and she was faced once again with her beloved, only this time he was standing tall, though his chest was still clawed open, and he was looking at her with an unmistakable expression of barely contained rage.

“Why did you let this happen, Vrae?  I trusted you.”

“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen; I swear it!”  She yanked her arm, desperately trying to free herself, but his grip was as strong as steel.

“You’ll never be free,” he sneered, and he leapt at her.  She screwed her eyes shut, anticipating pain, but he never made contact, and when she opened her eyes, she was standing on the dark, rocky shore of her secret cove near Vradlock.  Cold water rushed against her shins, and she was wearing nothing but her chemise, which whipped around her body in the wind.  She turned to see the very man who had attacked her moments ago slowly shuffling towards her from several paces away, whole and happy.

“Caspar,” she gasped, unable to resist the instinctive jolt of fear that shot through her.  He was preoccupied with the task of fastening up his tunic and was about halfway done, but he stopped and looked up at the sound of his name.

“Yes, shaelith?” he acknowledged without an ounce of malice in his voice or countenance.  Something about the way he said that Elvish term of endearment caused a great dissonance of emotion inside her.  Part of her screamed that she should be afraid of him still.  Part of her was immersed in the familiar warmth of the moment.  And part of her ached with a terrible grief and yearning at the distant awareness that she had not heard him call her beloved in any language in ten years.

“Nothing.  You’re just very handsome.”  The words seemed to come out of her instinctively, as if she’d said them before in this exact circumstance.  It was a strange sensation, but she soon forgot it when Caspar smiled and gave a small laugh.

“Don’t think flattery will give you the upper hand in your next fencing lesson.”

“I don’t know.  So far it seems the appropriate response to losing,” Vrae teased, striking an alluring pose and pulling the hem of her chemise up her thigh just a little to illustrate her point.  For a moment, she saw affection and want in his green eyes, but then they turned a milky white, and his smile fell as his flesh withered and decayed.

“It will take more than simple charm to gain the upperhand against an officer of the Kargat,” he replied as she remembered he had, though nothing about the way he said it was right.  His voice was not his own; it was deeper, gravellier, and raspier, and had a sharp, condescending cadence that struck terror in her heart like nothing else.

“You know I have more than charm,” she responded with far more bite and defiance in her tone than she had given the words when she’d originally said them.

“Not enough to stem the tides of Darkon.”  Caspar raised his withered arms, and Vrae heard the roar of water coming behind her.  She barely had time to note that those were not his words before the massive wave hit, and she was swept into a deep, unending darkness.  Her cries left her as muted gurgles until her lungs were empty of air.

~ ~ ~

Vrae’s pale violet eyes shot open with a jolt of adrenaline to see a number of figures looming over her.  She was disoriented from sleep, and that was only made worse by the flurry of movement and shouting around her.  Instinctively, she tried to get away and managed to slip from the grasp of those she found were holding her.  She tried to scream, but she had been gagged, and her panic grew tenfold.  Desperately, she scrambled towards the barn door, but a tall, imposing figure stepped in her path and grabbed her by the shoulders.  She looked up to see a pair of familiar green eyes giving her a cold, hard glare.  He was the man of her dreams and nightmares alike.  He was Caspar Arden, and he had finally found her.

Before she could even begin to pull away from him, he spun her around and pushed her to the ground.  Kneeling down with his knee on her back, he captured her flailing arms and cuffed her wrists together.

“Vrae Zilivna, you are under arrest for murder, sedition, terrorism, theft, damage of property, and impersonation,” he declared before leaning down and adding as a whisper in her ear: “You will never elude me again.”

She gave muted shrieks as she continued to struggle against him in vain.  Even though she knew it was pointless, every instinct in her demanded that she not go quietly or make this easy for him.  Neither he nor his cronies would get the satisfaction of seeing her give in, and she would kick and squirm every moment she still had energy left to do so.

“Oh, she’s a feisty one.  Better be safe than sorry, then,” an unfamiliar masculine voice commented casually.  She heard the casting of a spell and felt her body go still in an instant.  Someone placed a black bag over her head and the weight of Caspar’s knee on her back disappeared, but then he lifted her and carried her from the barn.

“She’s the one you wanted then, is she?” she heard an older woman’s voice pipe up once they were outside.  It was undoubtedly the farmer who owned this barn, and she was an apparent loyalist to the crown.

“Pay her,” Caspar ordered curtly, and Vrae heard the metallic rustle of a large coin purse being handled.  She was deposited in the back of a carriage shortly thereafter and quietly taken away.

She didn’t know how long the journey was, but eventually, exhaustion caught up with her once more, and she fell entirely asleep.  When she awoke, her situation was much worse in every way she could have expected.  She was chained by the wrists to either side of a small stone room, her arms aching terribly from trying to hold the weight of her unconscious body.  Her eyes felt like they were burning from the bright light of the lantern that was held only a few inches from her head.  As quickly as she could, she found her footing and got herself a bit more distance from the lantern by standing up properly.  It wasn’t enough for her eyes to adjust however, and she had to close her eyes to spare her vision.  Clearly this was a form of imprisonment tailored to her weaknesses.

“Ah, she’s awake.  Get Arden,” someone said from somewhere in front of her and slightly to the right.  She’d heard that voice before; it belonged to the man who had cast that paralyzing spell on her in the barn.  In response to his order, there were footsteps and the opening of a heavy door.  “Took him ten bloody years, but the mad bastard finally caught you.  I imagine this is about to be a lot of fun.”  The light moved away from her face, to her relief, but the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was a fist coming towards her face.  The impact badly split her lip, and as she felt blood trickle down her chin, she looked up to see her assailant smirking devilishly at her.  He was a pale human man of slightly muscular build with short blond hair and gold-rimmed spectacles.  He wore a long, sharply tailored sleeveless coat and matching fingerless gloves that went up to his elbows.  He punched her again, and her cheek throbbed.  She spat blood at him.  “Oh, don’t be like that.  I’m only softening you up.  Nothing personal.  And we haven’t even gotten to the good stuff yet,” he told her with a sigh before taking her by the shoulders and kneeing her in the gut.

He went on like this for several more minutes with the same casual enjoyment one would expect of sipping a good beverage.  Aside from the first two punches, he mostly left her head alone, perhaps to ensure she was coherent enough for interrogation, but with the use of various implements, he beat the rest of her until she almost felt too raw to stand, and he didn’t even stop when the door opened.

“That’s enough, Sicarian,” a stern voice ordered, and Vrae glanced up to see Caspar at the doorway with another Kargat agent, a burly human woman with close-cropped dark hair.  Sicarian ignored this and followed through on a swing against her thigh with a nightstick.  “Don’t make me tell you again.”  Caspar’s tone had an insistent and dangerous edge to it this time which did succeed in halting Sicarian mid-swing.

“As you say.”  With this, Caspar and the woman came further into the room, and he positioned himself to stand in Vrae’s direct line of sight.  The woman moved around behind her, but remained silent.

“I will be blunt.  The only reason you’re still alive is that you possess valuable information.  I am under no illusions that you will give up that information freely, so I won’t waste time on simple threats,” Caspar stated, folding his hands behind his back.  He nodded to the woman, and she tore open Vrae’s shirt, exposing her back.  As the fabric sagged forward, a silver locket hanging from her neck by a leather cord slipped into view.  His eyes widened ever so slightly at the sight of it, and Sicarian took it between his fingers with a predatory smirk.

“Oh, hello.  What have we here?”  He moved to open it, but a violet spectral hand stopped him, holding it shut.

“Leave it.  It could easily be a trap,” Caspar told him sharply.

“Or it could tell us something she doesn’t want us to know.”

“Are you prepared to wager your hands on that bet?”  At this, Sicarian frowned and pursed his lips, but conceded the point, letting go of the locket.  Satisfied, Caspar turned his attention back to the other Kargat agent.  “Deloc, if you would.”  There was a scraping sound as Deloc picked something up off a table.  She pressed what felt like the end of a rod against Vrae’s spine, right between her shoulderblades.  There was a brief pause and then Vrae’s entire body spasmed in agony as something that felt like a dozen slimy tendrils crawled across her skin.  It was like being stung by a hundred jellyfish all at once.  She screamed and screamed as wave after wave of white hot pain hit her.  Eventually, Caspar made a gesture and Deloc pulled the rod away.

“Now you understand what awaits you if you don’t tell us what we want to know,” Sicarian said, his smirk returning as he roughly took her chin in his hand and lifted her face up to look at him.  “We know you’ve had contact with dissidents in Il Aluk.  Be a good girl and give us their names.”  Vrae remained silent and simply glared back at him in pure contempt.  He gave a huff of amusement and traced his thumb over her bottom lip.  “How strange.  I’ve heard so many stories about the Nightmaven’s pretty mouth and silver tongue, but now she won’t speak a single word.”

She felt sick at his touch, and the moment his thumb passed back over her lip, she bit him.  He hissed in pain and withdrew his hand, shaking it for a second before slapping her hard across the face in retaliation.  Deloc laughed, and he sneered at her.  “Give her the rod!” he snapped.  There was another pause and Vrae was wracked with terrible agony again.  When it stopped, Sicarian grabbed her by the hair and pulled her head up, getting right in her face.  “Tell us the names!” he snarled, and she flinched, but gritted her teeth and said nothing.

Over and over, she felt the sting of the rod, and over and over, Sicarian shouted at her, trying to pressure her with the discomfort of his close presence.  She looked past him and locked eyes with Caspar, who watched stoically, though she could have sworn she saw his brow twitch ever so slightly once when she screamed.  He held her gaze, but she could see nothing of what he was thinking in his eyes the way she once could.  Many years ago, she’d been able to read every look, every miniscule change of expression on his face, but now there was nothing discernable there.  It was as if he was truly dead inside.

“Falman reius phor ilta, lu’il satiira ol zhah ukta,” she began to sing as the pain and the fear Deloc and Sicarian were inflicting on her became almost too difficult to bear.  She steeled herself with this song as she stared down Caspar and ignored Sicarian’s demands for information.  Caspar knew this song, because she had written it for him, and as such, it finally forced a visible and unmistakable reaction from him.  He glowered at her and his mouth briefly quivered with anger.  “L’er’griff seil wun l’oloth, hwuen barra chu lu’il na’eroth,” she continued, though her voice faltered briefly when Sicarian yanked her head back, breaking her eye contact with his superior.

“Is that Drow?  What the hell is she singing?” he asked Caspar, who seemed to be incrementally losing his composure with each word from Vrae’s lips.

“Rin’ov ul’naus, rin’ov maglust, jhal nind zhaun weth byr wun suust,” she half-shrieked as the rod’s tendrils writhed across her back again.

“Gag her,” Caspar ordered, his anger now very apparent and barely contained.

“What’s she saying?” Sicarian pressed, and she continued to sing as best she could between groans.

“‘Zil l’aeros zhaun lil chath, ‘zil lil linthar zhaun lil linath.”

“I said gag her!” Caspar yelled, and she could feel Sicarian stiffen slightly in return.  Obediently, he tore off part of one of Vrae’s sleeves and tied it around her mouth as a gag.  Though muffled, she continued to hum the tune, aiming to provoke as much emotion as she could.  He raised an eyebrow at her, which he turned on his boss.

“Well, now how are we supposed to get information from her?  Unless…?”  A wicked grin came across his face as a possibility occurred to him, and his eyes lit up like an excited child.  Caspar gave him an affirmative nod.

“Yes.”

“Excellent!  I haven’t gotten to use that thing in ages!”  With this Deloc pulled the rod away and reached for something else on the table, which she handed over Vrae’s shoulder to Sicarian.  It was a twisted crystal crown with a pinkish purple gem at its center.  “You’re in for it now, little bird.  This one makes the rod seem like a gentle kiss.”  He grabbed Vrae by the jaw again, forcing her to hold his gaze, and the gem began to glow, its light refracting through the crystal band.

The torment she felt a moment later was indescribable.  Sicarian was attempting to brutally force his way into her mind, and the more she resisted, the more pain the crown inflicted on her.  All she could think to do was try to keep humming, try to focus her thoughts on that song.  It seemed to be just enough, because he pushed and pushed for what seemed an eternity with little success until he pulled away with a huff of frustration.

“Well, that’s bloody disappointing.  I can’t get deep enough; all I can hear is that stupid song.”  He pulled off the crown and handed it back to Deloc.

“What do we do with her now?” she asked, clearly directing it at their superior, though Sicarian answered anyway with the spiteful air of a child who’d been denied his fun.

“She’s fucking useless.  She’s not even amusing anymore.  We should just kill her and be done with it.”  He held open his palm and a roiling ball of black and red energy formed there.

“No.  Her life belongs to me,” Caspar snapped.

“Azalin Rex would not see us waste-” Sicarian was cut off mid-sentence as Caspar swiftly stepped forward and grabbed him by the throat.

“Challenge me again and you’ll be next in line for the rod.”  These words weighed heavy with malice and disdain, and Sicarian’s eyes went wide with fear.  Perhaps this time his instinct for self-preservation would fully override his need to push boundaries.  His spell fizzled, but Caspar did not loosen his grip.  “Your pact with the king will not protect you from me.  Remember that well.  And remember than Baron Metus gave me leave to do with the prisoner as I see fit.  Now get out of my sight before I change my mind and gut you.”  With this, he threw the warlock to the side, releasing him, and this time Sicarian had the good sense to obey without question.  He stumbled out of the room as quickly as he could, and Caspar watched him go with an undisguised look of disgust.  “Clemens aeternales, preserve me from such idiocy,” he muttered before returning his attention to Vrae, who was barely conscious enough to perceive all of this.

“What are your orders, sir?” Deloc inquired dutifully, and he seemed to calm down slightly, regaining much of his composure.

“Throw her in a cell.  I’ve had enough of this for one day.”

Deloc gave a grunt of acknowledgement before she began to unchain their captive.  The runes that glowed at the edges of the manacles faded as they were released, and Vrae dropped to the stone floor in a battered and bloody heap.  A wheezing, pained moan escaped her, and Deloc’s lip curled at her in revulsion.  She slung the drow over her shoulder and carried her from the room, taking her to a small, dank cell and tossing her inside.

Vrae didn’t know how long she was left in that cell, but the hunger gnawing in her stomach told her that it was several days.  She passed in and out of consciousness with no other sense of time.  After a while, she started to sing, partly to heal her injuries faster and partly just to hear the haunting way the notes reverberated through the space.  She sang many different songs, but she always came back to The Maiden and the Sea’s Shadow, the ballad she’d written for Caspar.  Not all of the words were in Drow; she’d only chosen those stanzas in the torture chamber so that he alone would know their meaning and thereby understand her choice as a personal attack.  She’d wanted to force him to show his emotions, to show her whether there was anything left of him inside, even if it was only feelings of rage and betrayal.  She’d wanted to see if she could make him hurt even a little in return for the tortures he’d brought upon her.  To her surprise, it had worked.  Some ember of the part of him that had once loved her still burned, if only to feel the pain of the moment he’d learned she was a double agent for the resistance.  Even burying himself deeper in Kargat doctrine hadn’t hollowed him out enough to save him from that.

But with the satisfaction of knowing she could still hurt him came a powerful guilt, one that made her sing his song far more like a lament than it was intended to be.  She knew that all of this was her fault in the end.  Everything came back to her falling in love with someone she shouldn’t have and foolishly trying to walk a tightrope between having him and fighting the good fight.  Naturally, fate could not abide such hubris, and her life had come crashing down around her just when everything she’d wanted was almost within reach.  Instead of turning him against the Kargat, she’d succeeded only in bringing him further into their embrace, and he had rained destruction on every other person who had mattered to her, to say nothing of the countless innocents who had gotten in his way.  Part of her wanted to blame her Lolthite cell leader, Olvenriel, for demanding Caspar’s death when their relationship was discovered.  If he hadn’t found that letter, if Vrae’d had more time to bring him to her side, he never would have lost himself to the heartbreak of believing she was a betrayer.  But she knew she should have been more careful.  She knew she had asked too much of the world, and the price had been paid with a river of blood that wound through every corner of Darkon, leading at last to this miserable Kargat prison cell.  Perhaps it was what she deserved.

“There was a maid who knew the sea.  He whispered to her distantly.  Dark waves caressed her tired skin, and she forgot how alone she’d been,” Vrae sang mournfully, her voice carrying through the halls.  If she was going to die in here, then she could think of no better way of spending her last days than allowing herself to yearn for the happier times of the past and the love of a man who no longer existed.

Moments after the last notes of her lament faded, there was a terrible cracking sound that came from somewhere far in the distance, and the world began to shake.  Rumbles like rolling thunder louder than any storm came next and just kept going and going.  A shockwave passed through the building, and the sounds of breaking and crumbling stone magnified.  Vrae curled into a ball, shielding herself as best she could.  The alarmed yelling and screaming of Kargat and prisoners alike reached her ears, adding to the already overwhelming din.

“The Hour of Ascension!  The Hour of Ascension is upon us!” she heard someone cry, and while she had never taken much stock in the Darkonian apocalypse myth, it was difficult to dispute it now when it truly seemed as though the world was ending.

A few moments later, however, the quaking and the thunder stopped, and Vrae slowly unfurled herself to take stock of her surroundings.

The other side of her cell had collapsed, and the weight of the stone had buckled the door, leaving a gap she could probably squeeze through, though she’d have to be quick about it if she wanted to be sure the rest of the cell wouldn’t cave in and either kill her or block the way.  Pulling her tarokka deck out of the depths of her corset, she willed the Illusionist card into her hand.

“Help me.  Please,” she whispered to it before flipping it over, and with that motion, she turned invisible.  “Thank you.”  With the reassuring feeling of spirits resting their hands on her shoulders, she took a deep breath and shimmied through the gap.  On the other side, she found a prison in ruins.  There was shouting and people scrambling around.  Some were prisoners escaping, others were Kargat trying to restore some semblance of order.  She could see bodies half crushed by fallen stone and injured people crying for aid as she made her way out.

“Castle Avernus exploded.  King Azalin has left Darkon,” she heard a Kargat mage inform another as he gazed into a crystal orb in his hand.

“It can’t be!  He lives to protect us!”

“If you don’t believe me, send a message to your friend Tullius.”  The other mage hastily cast a spell at this prompting and began to speak at the air.

“Tullius?  You at the watchtower?  What’s happening at Castle Avernus?”  There was a long pause as the mage got a response, and his eyes went wide.  He cast the spell again to reply.  “Get out of there, mate!  Now!  Head to Martira Bay.  If the throne is empty, we have to back Baron Metus.”  When the message ended, he buried his fingers in his hair.  “Fuck!”

So it was true.  The Hour of Ascension, the myth that one day Azalin Rex would vanish and the spirits of the dead would drag Darkon back into the darkness from which he’d plucked it, had come to pass.  The destruction of Darkon had begun.

~ ~ ~

Vrae fled the ruins of that prison and found herself in the Forest of Shadows, not too far from Il Aluk, though she knew she could not go back there now.  They would expect her to go there for aid and to warn her allies, so she ran east through the wilderness for days, trying to get as far from Castle Avernus and any Kargat strongholds as she could.  As she made her way into the Mountains of Misery, she began to see the shape her country’s destruction had taken.

The Mists, which usually formed the thick Shroud which had blanketed Darkon’s borders for several years now, were no long remaining at the border.  The Mists would flood random areas at night, and sometimes didn’t recede by morning.  Whole towns were being swallowed as the edges of the kingdom closed in and fractured its regions.  By the time Vrae had reached Tempe Falls, the Mists had consumed everything south of the city and crept up to block the road back east to Mayvin.  By all accounts, it was relatively safe to traverse the road during the day, but anyone who attempted to pass through at night vanished without a trace.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all of this was the way the general populace was reacting, or rather not reacting, to the crisis.  Many people were unaware or refused to believe anything was wrong and dismissed the idea that Darkon was in peril.  Darkonians generally didn’t openly discuss or even acknowledge any of the terrible things that happened around them as a matter of course, but Vrae had been sure that the destruction of the land itself would warrant a very big exception to that rule.  Instead she found even among the hushed whispers of those who believed the Hour of Ascension had come that there was resistance to the idea of taking any action to save themselves.

After a while, Vrae gave up on the notion of trying to help organize evacuations and was forced to recognize that there was nothing left she could do for her people.  There was no point in continuing her fight against the Kargat; they would be consumed by the Mists eventually as surely as anyone else.  All she could do now was tie up her own loose ends and try to find a Mistwalker who could take her to another country, ideally somewhere the Kargat would be reluctant to follow, such as Barovia.

She continued making her way east through the mountains, heading back home at last to Vradlock.  If the world was ending, she wanted to see it again.  She wanted to walk its streets one last time.  She wanted go to her secret cove and look out across the Nocturnal Sea.  While going there did grant her some measure of peace, and she was finally able to pay her respects to many of her friends’ graves, she felt a unique pain in knowing the Mists would likely claim it very soon.  Everything south of Vradlock was already taken by the time she got there, and she found herself wanting to remain as long as she could, because she would never see the place again once she left.  Her stay was cut short, however, as the Kargat continued to hound her, and she fled north up the coast to Nevuchar Springs, hoping Caspar’s reluctance to return to his own birthplace would buy her enough time to find a Mistwalker.  She was very much mistaken.

Caspar had anticipated her, and she was not there two days before he found her.  He and his agents attempted to ambush her at dusk while she was on her way back to her hideaway after getting supplies at the market.  They chased her through the streets, and she stole a horse, riding out of the city and into the forest where it would be far easier to lose them.  Caspar took the other horse in the stable and pursued her, leaving his agents to follow far behind on foot.

The exposed roots of the trees made the paths through the forest treacherous, especially on horseback, but Vrae was desperate to get away, so she was forced to split her attention between avoiding hazards and glancing over her shoulder at Caspar.  Low-hanging, half-exposed autumn branches whipped at her as she frantically raced past them, leaving scratches on her cheeks.  She bobbed and wove as best she could between the trees to break Caspar’s line of sight on her, but he was nothing if not persistent.  Even if he couldn’t get a clear shot at her, he was still going to try to run her down.  She managed to keep him at bay for a while, but she ran into trouble when she discovered a wall of mist blocking her way across a steep ravine.  She was forced to stop quite suddenly, and her horse lost its footing, tumbling to the ground with her dangerously close to the edge.  Caspar caught up to her in a matter of seconds, and she got up as quickly as she could to face him, drawing her rapier.  He nimbly dismounted and drew his own elegant blade in return.

“You can’t run any further, Vrae.  This ends here,” he told her grimly, squaring up with her.

“That suits me fine; I’m tired of running,” she replied before taking the first swing.  They fell into a familiar dance, except now it was twice as fast and driven by desperation.  She tried to keep her back to the west so that she wouldn’t be blinded by the last rays of coppery sunlight filtering through the trees, and even with this disadvantage, she managed to hold her own.

“You can’t hope to outmaneuver me.  I taught you everything you know,” Caspar warned as he forced her to give ground.

“Not everything.”  With a flick of her wrist, she sent a spray of spectral green tarokka cards at him, leaving a thin cut across his cheek and several on his shoulders and arms.  He hissed at the awful sting of it and gave her a steely glare.

“Very well.  If you wish to play games.”  Making an arcane gesture with his free hand, he flung three bolts of violet energy at her, which she could not evade.  They crashed into her with brutal force, causing her to stagger from the pain.  He took advantage of this and slashed her up the side of her arm.  She dropped down, feigning a collapse to cut him across the thigh, and he growled through gritted teeth, plunging his blade into her shoulder in retaliation.  It was a deep wound, and it impeded the function of her left arm, making it agony to try to bring her sword up to block his next strike.  As a result, it was easy for him to knock it from her grasp.  She refused to let that be it for her, however, so she ducked and spun behind him to kick the back of his knee in, sending him to the ground.  He grabbed her by the arm as he went down and took her with him.  Through their frenzied struggle with each other, they rolled until they came up against the foot of a tree.  Caspar slammed her bloody shoulder against an exposed root when she tried to twist his sword out of his hand, and she shrieked, sending out a wave of pale green energy that blasted him backwards, though he gracefully tumbled with the hit and was quickly back on his feet, holding the tip of his rapier to her throat.

All was suddenly very quiet and still but for the sounds of their heavy breathing as they stared at each other.  Vrae lay against the tree, dirty, battered, and holding her hand halfway to reaching for the dagger in her boot, though now there was no point, and she knew it.  After a moment, she pulled her hand back and went limp with despair and exhaustion as the realization of her defeat washed over her.  She had no more tricks up her sleeve, no cards left to play that could save her now.  This was it.

Vrae looked up at Caspar, taking him in one last time before the killing blow she knew was coming.  His short black hair was unkempt, and he was bleeding profusely from multiple cuts.  There was a wild look in his green eyes that faded along with the adrenaline of the moment to be replaced with cold resolve, but even that didn’t seem to last.  The silence dragged on and on, and the blow Vrae expected never came.  He just continued to stare down at her, holding his blade perfectly still.

“Was it ever real between us?” he asked quietly after what seemed an age.  The question took her by surprise, and her eyes widened for a second before she answered.

“Yes, but as far as I can see, the Kargat killed the Caspar I loved a long time ago.”  These words brought a subtle change to his expression, and though she couldn’t place the emotion behind it, it was enough to know that it had affected him.

“He’s buried somewhere beneath countless sins,” he told her, and the weight of resignation settled in her heart.

“Then I’ve truly lost everything.  I ask only that you leave me my dignity and grant me a quick death.”  Closing her eyes, she hung her head, waiting once more for oblivion.

“I can’t do that.”  The knowledge that he was determined to make her suffer bit deeper into her heart than she ever would have expected, and she had to fight the urge to cry.  She needed to keep whatever scraps of pride she could in these final cruel moments.

The sound of Caspar sheathing his sword reached her ears, and she braced for whatever alternative source of pain he was going to inflict, but that wasn’t the feeling that came.  Instead, she felt a gentle hand lift her chin, and she reopened her eyes to find him kneeling before her.  Though his face was as stony as ever, there was a sheen in his eyes.  He leaned in and kissed her, softly and carefully, and she suddenly realized that what he’d meant was that he couldn’t bring himself to kill her.  Despite everything, he still loved her, and amidst the shock of that revelation, she felt a spark of hope that brought tears spilling down her cheeks at last.  She returned his kiss, and he leaned further into her, lingering for a moment before parting.

“I’m so sorry.  For everything,” he confessed as he rested his forehead against hers.  He forced himself to pull away after a moment, however, looking her in the eyes with such guilt and certainty that she could feel its heaviness in her chest.  “You have to run.”

“Caspar…”  Vrae reached up to hold his cheek in her hand.  She didn’t want to go anywhere without him, not when he’d just given her hope, but as she opened her mouth to say so, she caught sight of something over his shoulder, something that sent a jolt of terror up her spine.  He saw the look on her face and turned to find his Kargat agents running towards them through the forest, an eager Sicarian among them.

“Run!” he commanded with a fearful urgency, sliding his arm around Vrae’s waist to lift her to her feet and shove her away.  She looked about frantically for the horses, but they had long since bolted, and she watched Caspar turn to her pursuers, squaring his jaw.  He drew his rapier once more, and the shadows lengthened around him, gathering into his other hand to form a second blade.  Brandishing both, he stalked forward to meet his men, and her heart sank.  He intended to buy her time, likely with his life.  Part of her screamed at her to fight, but she knew she couldn’t, not in this state, so when she retrieved her sword from the ground, she sheathed it and fled as fast as her tired legs would carry her.  She barely made it a dozen meters, however, before the Mists began to roll towards her.  She tried to avoid them, but they came in too fast and they were all-encompassing.

As the Mists washed over her, she stole one last look behind and saw Caspar in a whirlwind of movement, crossing blades with three of his men and weaving out of the way of Sicarian’s eldritch blasts.  Then she blinked and her world was gone.  There was nothing for her now but the white of the Mists and the cold, damp ground beneath her feet.

[svartalfhild]

Shattered

Rating: T

Genre: Gothic Romance, Fantasy

Words: 3,375

Summary: A violent incident with a customer in Vrae's fortune telling shop causes her casual relationship with Caspar to change.

A/N: This is a small story that covers an important moment in the life of my new DnD character, a drow bard who is from Ravenloft, but ends up in a homebrew setting for our campaign.

Previous stories: The Oracle and the Officer, (Un)bearable

~ ~ ~

“You are a liar and a cheat!” Gazzrym Kelyrnbrek shouted, bringing both his massive bronze dragonborn fists down on Vrae’s table.  She heard the heavy wood beneath the green velvet tablecloth crack, and she took two fluid steps back from him.

“I know that you’re dismayed, sir, but you misunderstand what it is that I do.  I offer guidance, not absolutes.  What you do with that information is entirely up to you.”

“I followed your so-called guidance, and I lost thousands!  The baroness laughed in my face!”  With the wide swing of one arm, Kelyrnbrek knocked everything off the nearest shelf.  Several glass jars filled with tea blends shattered on the wood floor, sending shards of glass and bits of dried herbs everywhere.  Vrae did her best not to flinch, but with little success.

“Did you never consider that the avaricious person I warned you of could be yourself as easily as it could be another?” she challenged, using every shred of calm she still possessed to keep her voice from shaking.

“I did not pay you to insult me, you little bleeder of a witch!”

“Nor are you welcome to insult me in my own shop.”

“Ya valeij wux virlymo vaecaesinki!  M’karshoj!” Kelyrnbrek roared at her in Draconic, hurling more vile insults and a threat.  He made a swipe at her, but she nimbly pulled out of the way.  He swiped again and she sidestepped him.  Frustrated, he gave another roar and snatched up a chair, throwing it at her.  She ducked and it splintered against the wall, but he followed up with a grab at her flowing robe.  He caught her by the sleeve, yanking her toward him.  Seeing no other option, she let out a terrible shriek that layered and echoed with the voices of the dead.  A wave a pale green energy rippled out from her, blasting and scattering everything in the vicinity.  A cacophony of breaking glass, clattering boxes, and banging wood joined her scream, but most importantly, her attacker was knocked several feet from her, almost to the door.

“Get out,” Vrae commanded as she stalked towards his prone form, casting another quick spell to make it look like spectral green flames were emanating from her eyes.  “Go before I ask those beyond the Veil to do more than knock you on your arse.”

Wide-eyed, but still seething, Kelyrnbrek made a hasty exit, leaving Vrae alone in her destroyed shop.  She hoped that no one who had been within a few hundred feet of the shop just now had thought to alert the constabulary after undoubtedly hearing the noise.  The last thing she needed right now was to have a bunch of nosy badges in her place.  As she surveyed the wreckage, a hollowness and acute despair settled in her.  She caught sight of the blue shards of a beautiful jar that had once held one of her most expensive herbs, and she slowly approached, glass and dried goods crunching and grinding beneath her feet as she went.  Getting on her knees, she picked up one of the blue shards and discovered that her hands were shaking.  The edges cut into her fingers, but even as blood began to run down them, she held onto the shard, staring at it while anger and fear and self-pity welled up inside her.

Why did her life have to be this way?  What crime was she paying for?  Did she have some deficiency that had earned her such a terrible lot?  She didn’t understand, and it hurt so, so much.  How was she going to fix her shop?  She barely made enough to support herself on meager meals.  How was she going to replace everything she’d lost?  She felt so hopeless.

“Vrae!” a familiar masculine voice called out in alarm, and she looked up to see the elven face of Caspar Arden in the doorway.  Was it closing time already?  That was a relief.

“I’m sorry, I don’t have a report for you today,” she replied, her voice soft and distant.  He rushed to her and knelt down, wide-eyed, as he gently took her by the shoulders.

“What happened?  Tell me everything.”

“A customer misinterpreted a reading and…and…”  Hand still shaking, she held up the lovely blue shard in her grasp, now dripping with blood.

“Gods, your hand!  Please, just let me-” Caspar cupped her hand with one of his gloved ones and very carefully took the glass from her with the other, tossing it aside.

“Caspar, I…”  She’d never found it so difficult to speak before.  It was unbearably mortifying to be so out of sorts in front of another person, even one so intimately acquainted with her as Caspar.  In some ways, that familiarity made it worse.  She found that she cared what he thought of her more than anyone else, and to show such weakness to him was humiliating.  “Why must-” she tried again, but her voice cracked and her lip quivered, and she knew it was over.  Her composure had been broken as surely as the objects around her shop.

To her utter surprise, he responded by pulling her into his arms.  Something changed inside her then, like a pot suddenly boiling over, and she began to cry.  She hadn’t cried since she was very small, because drow simply did not allow themselves to cry, especially not in front of others, nor had she ever been held by anyone like this before.  The tenderness of the gesture had shocked these emotions out of her, and she didn’t know what to do except cling to Caspar in return and hope that he didn’t think less of her for it.

After a few moments, he shifted to pick her up and carry her upstairs to her flat, careful not to jostle her too much as she silently wept into his shoulder.  There, he sat down with her on the edge of her bed and simply continued to hold her until she had no more tears to shed.

Crying left her feeling strange.  There was relief, but also a sort of hollowness that she didn’t know how to fill.  She was so very tired, and all she wished for was to fall asleep against Caspar’s shoulder, but she couldn’t bear to show him any more of her weakness, so she pulled away from him, crawling from the comfort of his arms to sit properly on the bed and dry her eyes.

“I’m sorry that you had to see me in such a state.  I promise I’ll not burden you like this again,” she told him, avoiding his gaze.

“You’re not a burden, and you don’t have to hide yourself away from me,” he replied quietly but firmly, reaching out to turn her head to face him.  Looking into those green eyes of his and seeing nothing but open care and concern made her feel more vulnerable than ever.  She closed her own eyes to stop herself from being overcome with emotion again.  “You once told me that I didn’t have to perform for you, that I could take off the mask I wear for the world when we’re alone together.  You can take off yours too.”

Vrae might have laughed if she weren’t trying so hard not to feel anything.  He had no idea what he was asking of her or how much she was hiding from him.  If she showed him her true self in totality, he would see that she was a traitor to the king he so loyally served.  He would see that she didn’t love him and had been using him to help others fight the Kargat.  Sure, they had pleasant conversations and the sex was great, but ultimately this ongoing affair of theirs was a sham.  She could never give her heart to a Kargat agent.

“Why does it matter so much to you?” she asked, opening her eyes again after she had steeled herself.  His thin lips parted in a subtle expression of astonishment.

“Do you think all that brings me here every week is duty and lust?  Vrae, I love you.  Your pain is my pain.  Your joy is my joy.”  The undeniable devotion of these words awakened something in her, and suddenly the world seemed to make a little less sense.  She was an oddity or an object of fascination, not a person to be cared for.  That just wasn’t the way of things.  And yet, Caspar loved her, deeply and genuinely.  There was no lie in his eyes, no ploy to get something from her, just sweet concern.  It was maddening.

“I…didn’t realize.  No one’s ever seen me that way before,” Vrae admitted, a far away tone returning to her voice as she stared at Caspar.  A sadness she’d never seen before came across his face, and he caressed her cheek with his thumb.

“Sal t’esswe olkiira sa va, ka sal galaeth, infae shear va alysar,” he told her, and while it would have been overwhelming enough for him to say such a thing in Darkonian or Common, it was profoundly romantic for him to say “I would bring you the stars if I could, just to see you smile” in Elvish, and Vrae found herself frozen in a state of disbelief.  What was she supposed to do now?  The dissonance between her hatred of the Kargat and her desire to bask in Caspar’s love was almost too much to bear.

“You’d do that for a peasant?” was all she could think to say.  Even after everything, she needed him to remember that he was the mayor’s chamberlain and she was essentially a gutter rat with exploitable talents.  In response, Caspar kissed her, and gods help her, she didn’t want him to stop.

“Will you let me?” he whispered when he pulled back, pressing his forehead to hers.

“Yes.”  Her answer wasn’t immediate, but she felt the weight of certainty in her chest when she said it, despite all her misgivings about who this man was and what he stood for.  He made her ache with the want to know what it was to be loved.

After a moment of allowing her acceptance to sink in, Caspar got up and retrieved some bandages, a cloth, and a bottle of rum from her cupboards.  With these, he began to gently clean her cut up fingers and bandage them.  She stayed perfectly still and quiet for him, even when it stung horribly, as her thoughts were consumed by the fact that she was allowing this relationship to shift from a primarily sexual affair into something much more damning: a romantic attachment.  She desperately tried to put it out of her mind and focus on more practical concerns, like what she was going to do about her shop.

“I should go down and clean things up,” she muttered as Caspar finished bandaging her fingers.

“I’ll help you,” he offered in return, which she normally would have thought strange coming from a man who had ostensibly never had to clean in his life, but she had just learned that he was willing to do a lot of things most nobles wouldn’t.

When Vrae nodded in agreement, they made their way back downstairs to the mess of broken things and spilled products.  Taking a deep breath, Vrae began to sing a sorrowful shanty about the back-breaking work aboard a ship that sailed the Nocturnal Sea.  With a few purposeful motions, she made some of the dust, tea leaves, and bits of glass fade into nothing, and she continued until every surface was clean.  Meanwhile, Caspar mended the table with a slow pass of his hand and attempted to fix the splintered chair as well, but it was too damaged for such a simple spell to repair, even with significant effort.

“I’ll have to stop selling tea.  I can’t afford to replace most of my stock.  It’ll reduce my income quite a bit, but perhaps if I’m smart, I’ll be able to scrape by for the next year,” Vrae observed somberly, surveying the empty shelves once she’d finished her song.

“I will pay for it.  And I will make sure the man who did this is arrested and tried for destruction of property and assault.”  There was a conviction in Caspar’s tone as he said this that, by now, she found all too familiar.  Usually, she objected to him seeking to bring the Kargat’s fist down on people who were unkind to her, but she wasn’t sure she would this time.

“Are you sure that’s what your colleagues will do to him?”  The question was half-hearted.  Part of her very much wanted Gazzrym Kelyrnbrek to get the full Kargat treatment for what he did, but another part felt guilty for wishing that on anyone, no matter how despicable they were.

“Yes.  It’s what justice demands.  No more, no less.”  Caspar’s dedication to justice was admittedly admirable, but he was, as ever, rather naïve about his organization’s ability to provide it.  Vrae could see how someone like him could be recruited by the Kargat.  Take a young man who wants to help others, teach him that his king and the law are the greatest protectors in the land, and tell him his country needs him.  Maybe someday she could find a way to show him the truth of things, but tonight, she wanted him to break the man who had hurt her.  Or perhaps show her how to do it herself.

“May I ask something of you?” Vrae queried, approaching Caspar and placing a hand on his arm.

“Name it.”

“Will you teach me swordplay?”  She tapped the pommel of the elegant rapier hanging at his hip.  “I’m tired of feeling helpless.”  The power spirits gave her was not enough.  She knew plenty of tricks to avoid or escape conflict, but she was far less capable when she was forced to engage, and she didn’t want to experience that again.

“Of course,” Caspar answered without hesitation.  “Anything to help you feel safe.”  At this, Vrae tugged him down to kiss him.

“Thank you.  For everything,” she murmured affectionately, and to her horror, she meant it.

~ ~ ~

Showing Caspar the small cove where she liked to go to be alone with the sea became another unexpected new intimacy in their relationship.  It was her place, far more private and personal than even her flat.  She’d spent a great deal of time here, especially after her parents were taken away by the Kargat when she was a child.  For a time, she had only been able to find rest with the rhythm of the waves close by, and though it was quite dangerous to be out at night, she’d had little choice.  She would not have brought Caspar here if it were not the only location where he could have both the space and the privacy to teach her the art of the sword.  The cove felt tainted now that he knew about it, but still another part of her relished sharing it with him.

A few days after he had promised to teach her, Vrae brought him to the cove at dawn.  It was cloudy, but the waters were calm, gently lapping at the craggy black rocks along the shore.  Caspar stood beside her as she looked out at the dark water, and she silently slipped her hand into his.  She was sure this was as close to peace as she could ever be, so she let the moment linger, solidifying it in her memory before it was gone, and they were about the business of making her a fine duelist.

Caspar gave her a rapier similar to his own but older and more subtle in its decoration.  She suspected it was the blade he had used before being given a new one to mark his current status as chamberlain.  It was probably still worth half a year’s income for her, so she handled it carefully.

“First thing’s first.  Never show your opponent your front, only ever your side.  This minimizes their target area and allows you to put more power behind your attacks,” Caspar began, drawing his own blade and demonstrating the correct posture.  Vrae mirrored him.  “Almost.”  He dropped his stance for a moment to adjust her shoulder back further.  “There.  Perfect.  Now, show me a strike.”  At his word, she thrust her blade out into the air.  “Good, but you’re relying on the strength of your arm to give power to the blow.  You can make the weight of your body do the work for you.  Watch.”  He did a thrust of his own, keeping his arm straight and merely bending his front knee to perform the strike.  Again, Vrae copied him, and he gave a satisfied nod.  “See how much energy that conserves?  How much more force you can create?  It takes very little pressure to break skin with a sharp weapon.  Imagine the damage you can do with a blow like that.”

“Is this what they teach at those posh schools?” Vrae asked with a small smirk, and Caspar gave her a hint of one in return.

“No, our parents hire tutors for this.  University dueling clubs are just where we start trying to kill each other.”

“I’ve heard academia can be very cutthroat, but I didn’t expect it to be quite so literal.”  This earned her a bark of a laugh and full smile from Caspar, something that always filled her with warmth.  He was so stoic all the time that getting this kind of reaction from him always felt special.  Granted, he’d been smiling and laughing more and more around her since they’d been together, especially when they were in bed, but it still excited her every time.

“Would that my blade was half as sharp as your wit, dear lady,” he quipped.  Vrae pursed her lips playfully and readied her sword.

“We won’t know for sure unless you show me,” she challenged.

“Very well.”  Caspar took a step back and readied his own sword.  Slowly, they began their dance, Vrae doing her best to follow his footwork.  They crossed blades a few times, and she started to feel more confident, moving faster and faster, but just when she thought she might gain ground, he deftly flicked her sword from her grasp, sending it flying to bury itself in the sand.  She stared at it, agape.  “That was rather good for a first try,” he complimented.  “It’s important not to give in to the urge to go for speed.  Haste makes you sloppy and wastes energy.  What you need is control.  Focus on precision and the speed you seek will follow.”

“Alright.  Again, then,” Vrae said determinedly after taking off her coat and retrieving her rapier.  Caspar nodded, removing his own coat and offering her another hint of a smile before they began once more.

She tried over and over, each time losing to a single deft motion she didn’t see coming, but she kept at it, and Caspar seemed to admire her persistence.  By her tenth go, she felt she’d made some progress, and he agreed.  He praised her footwork, but it made her a little too bold in return.  She attempted a feint, but he easily anticipated it and grabbed her sword arm, allowing him to completely stop her attack and pull her in close, looping his other arm around her waist.

“Control,” he reminded her, and with her back pressed against him, she could feel the rumble of the word in his chest as well as hear it from over her shoulder.  She had lost, but somehow, she felt more exhilarated.

“I’d ask to try again, but we’re likely short on time,” she replied breathlessly, taking note of how light the sky had become.

“Unfortunately, it would seem so.”  With an air of reluctance, Caspar let her go and sheathed his rapier.  She turned to face him and put a hand on his chest, smoothing the dark fabric of his shirt.

“I look forward to the next lesson.”

“As do I.”  She felt that rumble again, this time in her hand, and she realized that in her need to feel less physically helpless, she had become helpless in a different way.